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Part 1: What is the music support Industry
Record labels, Recording studios, marketing,manufacturing plants, physical sales, mechanical rights, majors verses independent record labels, DIY production, producers, session musicians, artists, A&R reps, radio pluggers, linis with live industry for promotion, touring, links with publishing for synchronisation to tv, radio, mixed media,
This video defines the recording industry as a whole, looks briefly at how the recording industry has changed over time, the main businesses that are involved with recorded music, as well as how musicians interact with the recording industry and of course the support network of professionals that keep its processes running smoothly.
The music recording industry is the business of finding talented artists and good songs, putting them together in a recording and selling the result in either physical or digital form to fans. It covers all types of music that is in a permanent state – by that I mean any music that doesn’t require a human to be there creating it at the point of audience listening to it, so vinyl, CD, .mp3, youtube, but it does not include any instance online where the performance inputted at one end, is steamed, and being listened to by the audience at the other end – That then becomes the live industry and is covered by performance royalties.
Heres the defining bit, in very simple terms, a composer writes a song, they own that idea, but they loan it to a musician to record it. The musician records their version of that song, thereby creating something new themselves. Imagine Madonna using a Michael Jackson Song. The two have distinct styles, and although MJ clearly has the idea and the songwriting, when Madonna comes along and records it, she will add her own feel that will entirely change it. They both have different types of ownership of the idea: MJ’s is the publishing royalty as he is the songwriter, Madonna’s is the Mechanical Royalty, as she mechanically made a new version of his idea. The recording. This is then loaned to the record label to distribute to fans and the label takes a cut of the resulting income.
The recording industry is the most publicly followed part of the music industry. People have come to use music industry and recording industry interchangeably as a result but its roots lie in the late 1800s when technology allowed for sound to be stored and later reproduced. The recording industry grew very quickly to be the largest part of the music industry and has only recently, in the last 10 years, begun its fall from that power as a result of no longer being able to regulate copying of the records it gets its value from. Today the recording industry is hurrying to move its sales online to access the customers again, but is still being held back by inadequate international copyright laws that allow people to steal music without consequence. Luckily, its a large industry, it always needs musicians to help it along and is still actively looking for them.
The main company in the recording industry is the Record label. A record label employs an Artist & Repertoire Representative to go out and find what styles of music will sell well. They are then tasked with finding artists that are talented in that genre, and songs that sound great, take the two to a recording studio and let a producer put them together into a great recording ready for sale.
This is a long process and todays market sees A&R reps waiting for aritsts and genres to develop themselves based on audiences, changing from the slightly more proactive and taste-MAKING process A&R used to do, to a more financially secure RE-active selection of talent. As a result of this, the songwriters and the artists are most commonly the same individuals now, but A&R will decide which of the selection of tracks available the artist will use to become the most marketable.
An artist development manager or the manager of the record label (depending on the label’s size) will take into account the wider industry and trends, and use their expertise of having usually been in other roles around the industry to make a judgement as to how many albums, what territories – or countries around the world – to promote the record in, what the potential future earnings could be from the artist and discuss these with A&R reps who have become specialists at particular genres or markets.
The Marketing department in the record label will decide on the branding, the ‘image’ as well as the target demographic for customer, age-range, possible re-use, re-mix and synchronisation opportunities from the recording and they will devise a route to market: The master plan of how to promote the artist and the recording as cost-effectively as possible to the target market.
The A&R rep will chat with the artist and come up with ways in which either party is happy for the records to be used, how much money they each think it will make, how long they want to be associated with each other for what the other party can provide and once they have been verbally agree, the A&R rep will create a bullet-pointed list of those conditions, just to formalise the agreement. This is called the Heads of Agreement and once signed by both parties becomes a legally binding document. So that there is no uncertainty as to what the document means, and because the english language is open to very different interpretation, lawyers are then called in to beef out exactly what each clause and phrase means in a kind of glossary of terms known as the associated long form agreement. this is the point where the artists’ lawyer and the record label’s lawyer have a great back-and-forth trying to decide exactly what each phrase means whilst keeping their client’s best interests in mind and a good music lawyer in this respect carries enough wisdom to be able to negotiate quickly with the other party while leaving everyone feeling happy. They bill by the hour of course.
Lest we forget, contracts are only there for when it goes extremely wrong. 90% of the time you should have a healthy working relationship where everyone involved wants the best music and the best delivery to the most people – not least because it is in everyone’s interests. What this means is that labels will not act unreasonably because they are the ones who showed faith in you in the first place. Make sure you or your artist manager keep an open line of communication with your contact in the label so that everyone knows what everyone’s intentions are. You shouldn’t have to be referring to your contract all the time; if you are, consider whether your relationship with your label has the trust it needs for a healthy relaxed environment.
So
Once the contracts, terms and conditions are agreed the artist receives a bit of the money that the record label thinks they are going to earn from the final records. This money is for the artists’ living allowance and to pay for recording studio time. It is known as an advance, because it is a payment of the money the recording is going to make, but has not yet made. It is not a loan, in as much as it does not need to be paid back, but because it is a payment of the earnings coming into the record label from that artist’s record, that money actually has to come INTO the label before they will pay any more money out to the artist, so you could say it does feel like a loan.
The A&R rep will give advice, but the advance will then be used to pay for studio time and maybe to pay for a high profile producer to add their sound to your songs and playing styles. Recording studios offer skilled sound engineers, technicians and producers so that every idea can be realised in high quality and the producer will run a mixdown of the takes – jargon for adjust the volume of each instrument and singer for each song recorded – which is sent off to a mastering house, the mastering department – or today, just moved from one program on your computer to another. where the tracks for an album are ordered and prepared onto a ‘master tape’. I’ll go into more detail about this whole process and the music tech involved behind it in another video, but for brevity lets crack on towards manufacturing!
So the tracks are ordered into masters which the record label keeps hold of, and which they use in manufacturing plants to create the cds ready for retail, or more frequently now they use expensive equipment to compress these digital files so they retain their high quality sound ready for upload to online ecommerce music distributors.
From this point they will set a release date for the albums, bring in different publicists for press early release, a radio plugger to promote the tracks to the major market radio stations and depending on the market they will circulate the track around the DJing circuit so that it is hitting the market before general release.
Another way of promoting the album is through touring the artist, which is where the live industry comes into its own with its own full business structure to deliver those performances.
So as a musician, you will probably begin gigging and live performance off your own back finding venues to book you through local personal contacts and maybe generate a small run of cds ready to sell as well as merchandising items to develop the brand. If this is sustained and profitable, you will catch the attention of A&R reps who will court you, that is they will have chats with you finding out your intentions, your current budget, if any other record label have been in touch or whether you have any publishing deals or booking agents they need to take into account. If you both decide that the artist and the record label make a good match and you can each see yourselves working together then they will draw up a heads of agreement, you or your manager will sift through it and your lawyer will negotiate the fine print. You will be given some much-needed cash and will be able to go out and devote your time fully to becoming a professional musician. You will spend many hours recording away in rooms without natural light and produce something that you will be proud of. You will submit it to your record label who will then call you in to discuss touring options, photo shoots, videos for marketing and some publicity stunts – maybe an off the cuff remark about something ‘accidentally’ to get people talking as well as doing press interview rounds to make sure everyone is aware and to build your buzz for the new release. This will be finished off with heavy touring being on the road, seeing many new places and working to random hours of day and night, hopefully with a set of people you love to be with and delivering to crowds who love to see you.
After about 9 months this process will thin out and you will enter into conversations with the record label about them taking up your next option period (simply put, the next funding for an album, recording an album and touring it) and whether it is profitable for them or if you have out-grown them and need a bigger budget and label. lather, rinse, repeat!
For this process you will receive a mechanical royalty from the sale of your record. This is the recognition that you have part-created it, and although this royalty is not as substantial as the publishing royalty received for owning the song that made it all happen, it can provide a good alternative income. Of course, today you are likely to own both the publishing royalty and the mechanical royalty, so its all good!
Don’t forget this hasn’t covered the publishing industry, live industry, music industry history, as well as support services to the industry or many pioneers in the music industry, as well as different job roles available, or step by step guides to becoming a musician in todays industry, all of which are covered in more detail on my website theosmithmusic.com
I hope you found this useful so you can crack on and don’t forget to let your musician friends know about it!
Record labels, Recording studios, marketing,manufacturing plants, physical sales, mechanical rights, majors verses independent record labels, DIY production, producers, session musicians, artists, A&R reps, radio pluggers, linis with live industry for promotion, touring, links with publishing for synchronisation to tv, radio, mixed media,
The a&r team come up with the way in which the composer will let their work be used by the publishing company. This is initially recorded in an agreement called the basic terms of agreement. This will be accompanied by a sort of glossary that explained exactly what each of the words in the agreement means, which is a guide to the terms.
I hope you found this useful so you can crack on and don’t forget to let people you think will benefit know about it!
Publishing houses, copyright, royalties, intellectual property, international property rights, self publishing, registering tracks, royalty collection services, atonal and international territories, heads of agreement.
This video is about the live music industry, what that term covers, where it came from, what types of business it involves, how musicians interact with the live industry, how musicians make money from the live industry and the support networks that keep it running.
The live industry is the process by which musicians are employed by venues to perform instantly to audiences in order to generate money through ticket sales, merchandising or value-added process such as advertising, endorsing or promoting.
If musicians perform songs for a gathering of people in exchange for money or value, and the performance is happening at the same time the audience is receiving it, then its part of the live music industry.
Music is a hotly debated subject of human evolutonary history. It has been recognised as starting by early humans mimicking the sounds around them in various activities including courtship, hunting activity, or even territorialism, all suggesting an emotion-stimulating communication method. It is well beyond this video to try and find out when the expression of emotion or ability to evoke certain emotion in others changed to an exchange of value and the origins of economic transfer of this type over humans’ 200,000 year lives, so I’ll just say that venues have not always been soley for music performance, and even today we see football stadiums being converted for the largest musical performances.
The live industry in the context of the booming 1950s industry was a promotional effort by the recording industry to sell more albums - artists would tour worldwide so that they would become more well known and in turn boost sales of their records. Lots of money was thrown at these tours and artists enjoyed lavish experiences. This has changed through the noughties (from 2000 onwards) so that productions became more profitable and self-sustainable as recorded music is no longer providing the income to justify the investment on live performances, they have restructured and now run (mostly) more efficiently.
The industry today is dominated by few, very large companies and can involve many hundreds of staff at any one event. The industry side is predominantly covered by the events management discipline, but with some support industries such as royalties collection and lawyers for customs waivers for example.
The business behind the live industry is fairly straight forward. An audience pays for the privilege to see musicians perform live music. Booking agents collect large amounts of musicians together to offer to promoters who match up the artists and the venues – in much the same way A&R reps do for the recording industry – and venues host the musicians and audience so that they make a profit from ticket sales and any beverages or merchandise.
In order to organise this on a larger scale musicians may attend many venues consecutively into what is known as a tour – a collection of gigs in different venues to the maximum amount of audience members. The artists may put on a more elaborate show, including the need for costumes and stage props which need to be set up and packed down for each gig. This brings along a set of staff like drivers to move the equipment from venue to venue, roadies who move equipment into and out of venues, riggers who set up the equipment on the stage, instrument techs who are experts in particular instruments so that they are set up and ready to play for the performing musicians, stage hands who are in charge of equipment being in place at the right time on stage, sound engineers, lighting engineers, special effects engineers, who look after the technical delivery and sound reinforcement of each show and extra (normally) locally contracted security staff. This has not included the support staff like dancers, choreographers, make-up artists, and for some younger stars, teachers!
These have to be managed and organised by an expert called a tour manager who is the direct liason with their employer, normally the record label, and their client, the musician. The Tour Manager is also responsible for the finances and regulating the budget given to them by the record label – although on larger tours they will delegate this to an accounting assistant to keep track of the finances. On larger productions the on-stage staff have to be managed by a stage manager and a logistics manager will maintain all the staff involved with setup, transport and packdown.
The tour manager and the record label will be in contact with various different promoters who have their own geographical ‘patch’ of expertise for attracting audiences to certain genres of music – some tours can end with a different promoter on a different pay rate for every venue of a 50+ venue tour!
A musician’s experience of the live music industry is usually fairly hectic. On small gigs they will be in charge of the booking, promoting and performing themselves leaving not much time for marketing, ticketing, promotion, and then delivery of a good event! Larger events involve a long lead-up time of intense preparation – don’t forget live events have changed from being solely promotional exercises for new albums from record labels to having to be profitable themselves, and many have investors to answer to meaning they must present a working business model for the tour before the full funding is released for them.
By the time musicians arrive at venues where all the equipment is set up, the staff are in place and the final preparations (and resolutions of some random unpredicted event that ALWAYS happens just before the gig) the extent of the planning that took place can be missed. Of course the sign of a good tour manager is one who is always calm and in control, as they are a project manager for a high-value project sometimes on display to hundreds of thousands of people with a reputation to uphold for many different stakeholders, the musicians, the record label, the entertainment company backing them, the logistics supplier, sometimes even the country they have arrived from. This explains why tour managers can sometimes be a little short with musicians. As long as you bear in mind the amount of leg work they have to do behind the scenes, all should be magical.
Before you get a gig you will either know venues directly, be with a booking agent who recommends you for gigs or a record label or publishing house that puts up the money for you to tour. You will bring on at least one promoter to organise the contracts between artist and venue and a publicist to tell the world about what you are up to. These will be organised by your business manager if you are lucky enough to have on. The agreement you make with the venue on what date, what songs, what conditions,all in a checklist form known as a rider. So for example, to ensure a DJ gets 2 Technics 1210s and a Pioneer club mixer, they will submit a technical rider with their performance contract. If they aren’t there, the contract is null and void and the artist doesn’t play. The contract will include an artist rider, or a list of items the artist requires from the venue as a condition of the performance. These have ended up being pretty stupid requests in the past, the most famous being from Van Halen’s request that a bowl of M&Ms was in their dressing room at every venue, which David Lee Roth later stated was just a test to see how well the venue read the contract; apparently just before this became their policy one of the stage hands for the band had nearly been killed by dangerous working conditions at one venue. As long as the request is legal, nothing is too obscure or too ridiculous.
The pre-promotion of the event may involve going to each area where you will be performing to do local radio interviews and press interviews so that you prepare the audience to buy your tickets, as well as setting up local competitions or even battle of the bands to focus and engage your target audience. A battle of the bands is a good way of hijacking the fans of a good local band so that you may impact on a specific scene in one particular area, other promotional methods include more online competitions, voting and commenting polls for customisation of touring so that fans can speak directly with artists.
Now, onto the musicians’ experience on the day:
You will turn up for the gig through a private entrance away from the public, be warmly received into a comfortable dressing room to prepare and warm up, supplied with the items you requested on your performance rider then when the time is right you will be called by the stage manager to the green room, a room off to one side of the main stage in which you do your final preparations and warm up. The stage manager will tell you your set length or the amount of time you have to perform songs before its time to come off, and you perform! Your artist manager will make a note of which songs you performed to submit to your publishing company so you can get some performance royalties and on longer tours after the performance you will meet competition winners, sign merchandise and do a quick press interview for a couple of local news publications, organised by your publicist.
Musicians make money from a combination of taking some of the ticket sales, refreshment sales, merchandise sales, performance royalties and can also make money from recording the gig to sell a ‘live performance’ album and receive mechanical royalties. You can do this by making sure every one of your songs is registered with your country’s royalty collection society as your work, then, once you’ve played a gig, make a note of the date, the songs performed, who they are by and get the venue manager to sign that it is correct. This can then be submitted to your royalty collection society to boost your performance royalty payments, which is an easy way to get another income stream! The fastest way for smaller artists to generate extra money is in merchandising, and that will prosper from successful branding and great design for your fans.
This video has not explained the history of the music industry, the recording industry or the publishing industry as well as support services to the industry or many pioneers in the music industry, as well as different job roles available, or step by step guides to becoming a musician in todays industry, all of which are covered in more detail on my website theosmithmusic.com
I hope you found this useful so you can crack on and don’t forget to let people you think will benefit know about it!
In truth, you don’t create your brand. Weird right? Your brand is those conversations your fans have about you, their gut feeling about what you’ve done and their personal opinion of you. Of course, you can influence that opinion by making sure that every point of contact with you is a fine-polished product that you are truely proud of.
It will take time and effort to develop a brand, but it is worth it in the long run, as it makes it easier for your audience to relate to you, while you become more memorable.
So how do you make sure that your fans are experiencing the best you that you can offer? There are a number of quick checks you can do, along with some longer-term projects, which when chipped away at, slowly come together and quietly end up as product you:
Summary:
- Find out what you represent
- Find out where you fit into the music industry
- Find out every point of contact with your fans
- Put what you represent about where you fit in the music industry as one message through every point of contact.
1. Who are you?
Sit down and have a think about what you deliver. What does it mean to be you and what about life do you associate with. Find your individualism in the things that have influenced you throughout your life. Don’t try so hard to be completely original. You aren’t. No one is. Instead, life influences you therefore nothing you do is truely ‘original’ but if you cast your life experiences net wide, you can become more creative by bringing them together in a way no one else ever has.
2. Where do you live?
No, I’m not talking about your geographical location, what I mean is how do you appeal to other people, what do they associate with and what types of people do you associate best with? This will be the hardest question to answer early on because you won’t have established your core identity and you won’t have data to work with about your audience, their spending habits or their preferences. But try to find your community; easiest through finding your genre, some of the current blogs, news, magazines, venues or promoters relating to your genre – this is where you will be best received, so its worth getting to know it quickly and see what other similar-sounding artists have done and why.
3. Where do you meet?
List every point of contact you have with the outside world. Now ask if they all match your identity and if they represent your community? Would one set of people who know you through one area describe you in a completely different way to another set from a different place? Aim to bring all of these expectations into line with a unified message to all – the better you communicate your values and intentions, the easier it is for promoters, A&R, and other industry professionals to see where you can get into the market, making it more likely you will land a job!
4. Polish the delivery
By now you know what you stand for, you know who needs to hear your message, you know where they come across it and so its time to make the impressions!
your colour scheme triggers a subtle and subliminal mood reaction in viewers and different colours bring different reactions:
Next gig, be there, gonna be wicked!
verses
We would like to extend to you a polite invitation of attendance at our annual variety performance
(don’t confuse your audience!)
The way you deal with absolutely every single person will affect your brand. With branding there is no down-time – but this shouldn’t be a problem if you have found who you represent properly, it is just a level of responsibility to deliver it as you begin to represent something greater than yourself when you develop fans, industry contacts, and people like your team or entourage who rely on you.
Your logo is a key part of identifying you quickly for fans, but it is not branding on its own. True visual design branding means you can cover up the logo and artist name and still know exactly who they are – think apple products, and the typography-obsessed late Steve Jobs. Spend the time to find a graphic designer to develop you logo – make sure you are truely proud of it. The test is that you are willing to show it to the head of universal music and confident they would be impressed with your individuality then you are there as long as you are also proud of it!
Your lyrical content, your biographies, you album intentions and your press interviews or public relations all contribute to your branding and to have it clearly established who you are and what you represent will mean that you are much more confident in what you do.
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