Ariel Publicity

“The In-Crowd” is an inside look at crowdfunding, with Ariel Publicity Artist Phil Putnam and RocketHub.com co-founder Brian Meece.  Each Monday, the boys are giving us an honest look at a crowdfunding project in action and dish on how things are going each week.

What is crowdfunding?  Find out here.

What does it look like?  See here.
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WEEK 7:

44 days in, 31 days remaining.  $3,753 raised (38% of the $10,000 goal), $6,247 needed.

Phil Says:

Songs About You is at a point that has felt far off and surreal up until this moment: there’s one month left until the deadline.  This snuck up on me, mostly because I’ve been thinking of the timeline in thirds and I know that the middle third always feels the longest and most difficult.  Well, it was difficult, but it just flew right by and now I’m on the precipice of the last leg of the journey.  I’ll be honest, there is a sense of relief due to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  This experience has worn on me more than I anticipated, in ways I didn’t imagine it would.  The relief isn’t the lone sentiment in my heart, though.  I’m excited by the possibility that this could still work, that all the money could be raised.  It feels like a long shot, but it’s still in the realm of reality.

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Lately, I’ve been heavily exploring the benefits of crowd funding, and wanted to share my findings with all of you. Crowd funding is a very viable fundraising option for independent artists. I have recently spoken with artists who have funded tons of projects by offering fans a variety of “high touch” experiences.

I linked up with my friend Brian Meece, founder of crowd funding platform RocketHub, to elaborate on some of the subtleties related to this topic. I really think that crowd funding is a great opportunity that more artists should take advantage of. It is a terrific way to not only raise more revenue, but also to connect with fans on an entirely new level. Keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3 of this series in the near future, where Brian and I will dive in even more regarding the powers of crowd funding. Hopefully these videos will help you brainstorm ideas that can potentially help your own career.

Check out Part 1: http://bit.ly/crowdfundingpt1

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Artists need help.

Do It Yourself (DIY) doesn’t actually mean doing everything alone. No one ever suggested taking the music industry on without the help of at least 1 team member.

The majority of artists whom I speak to on a daily basis have additional day jobs. To dump the entire DIY burden on a musician who is already giving 40-50 hours a week to another arena is ludicrous. If you stack the self-promotion essentials (blog outreach, etc.) atop a laundry list of direct-to-fan responsibilities, a promising artist can be quickly pushed to apathy. I get emails all day saying, “I just don’t have any time. Can’t I just make music? That’s all I want to do.”

Sadly, for an independent artist, those days are over. Music without exposure is nonexistent. That being said, artists need at least one person to help them. I don’t care who it is; their mother, father, brother, stereotypical super fan, 5th grade teacher, parole officer, etc. An artist needs to exhaust their personal networks to find someone who is willing to help them succeed. This task is way too daunting otherwise.

Artists: If you have literally no one in your life who can help, check out http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/employers/submit.asp. Create a for-credit internship opportunity for a student. Let them handle a portion of your online media efforts, and take an immense burden off your shoulders (I would NEVER recommend letting anyone post content on your behalf. I am just referring to the less interactive tasks). This will give a student an in-the-trenches perspective on what it’s like to be an artist in today’s DIY landscape. A band is a business. Businesses have interns.

Artists without assistance will continue to struggle, or quit. Those who can hone their efforts properly (with the help of at least 1 other teammate) will be around to tell the next generation of musicians how both versatility and adaptability allowed them to prosper in the most hectic of times.

Christopher Gesualdi is currently the Marketing Director @ Ariel Publicity (http://twitter.com/cyberprmktg)

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Industry Experts & Musicians Dish Out Their Best SXSW Tips

As a follow up to last week’s The SXSW Survival Guide, I’ve decided to take some of the best tips from some of the experts of today’s music industry and provide them for you here! I took the time to talk to some of the contributors from our 2009 Indie Maximum Exposure list to see what they had to say.

Over the next several days, I will be posting all-new tips that you can use to maximize your South by Southwest experience.

This advice is divided up into 3 sections

1. Before You Go
2. While You Are There
3. After You Get Home

There are not 100 here but they are some great gems…

BEFORE YOU GO

Read “How to Talk to Anyone” A Week Ahead
So, the week before the conference, read “How to Talk to Anyone” or any book about how to be a great listener. Then, use the conference as your testing ground for your new listening skills. Get extremely interested in those around you. Think like an investigative reporter. Ask follow-up questions about how they got into that. What they love and hate about it. Ask why they came to the conference. Talk about non-work-stuff, too!  Be very curious about their unique perspective. Learn from it.
- Derek Sivers

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Now that you know what to do to prepare before you get on the road, you need to know what to do while you’re there! Here’s what our experts have to say:

WHILE YOU ARE THERE

Go With The Flow
Don’t bother jotting down the bands you want to see because chances are, you will not make it to most of them. You’ll be on your way to see the band you “must see,” and you will absolutely run into someone you know on the street, then one thing leads to another, and you missed the show.
- Lou Plaia

Stay Portable
Unless your artist image is “musical Sherpa,” then you don’t want to be tied down to a huge backpack or bag full of crap. You’d be better off having a second-run CD batch made in thin, lightweight packaging OR have some download cards made. Nothing sucks more than hauling 40 pounds of round plastic with you. If it’s too late to make your CD’s in flat packaging (cardboard sleeves, paper envelopes, Tyvek, etc.), don’t lug around a bunch of jewel cases. You’ll be better off in the long run if you can just pick up and move to the next party, function, session, etc.
- Matthew Ebel

Make Free Time
Scheduling meetings is great, but you never know who you are going to run into on sixth street, so leave some holes in your schedule. Some of my best meetings at SXSW have been by chance.
- Rick Goetz

Try Not To Judge A Man By His Business Card
The music business is like that board game perfection. Every few months all the pieces pop up and people land in different positions and in different companies. Do your best to meet people of quality rather than just the people you think have something you need. You never know where people end up and having been nowhere important and somewhere important several different times in my career – trust me when I say I appreciate the people who gave me the time a day when I didn’t have a flashy business card or a lot going on.
- Rick Goetz

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Ariel’s Top 7 Facebook Apps for Musicians

Do you have a fanpage but still not sure how to make it pop?

Here are six Apps that will set you on the right path, help you to stand out from the pack and keep your fans engaged and interested in you on a consistent basis.

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