It’s compelling to see a music school frequently associated with tradition break out of its mold, daring to present unheard ideas that will better serve our professional musicians of tomorrow.
At New York City’s premiere music conference, Chamber Music America, that is exactly what the world-renowned Eastman School of Music did.
In their “pre-conference” presentation in mid-January, I was in the audience, invited by the school, curious to see what their offerings were.
Have you ever heard marketing advice from a supposed “guru” on marketing, coming away feeling like you actually did not learn anything that could be used for your career? This is not an unusual experience for musicians, especially classically trained ones.
To be honest, due to prior experience with music schools presenting weak marketing lectures, I was, at first, expecting a seminar along those lines.
I couldn’t have been more happily pleased otherwise – Eastman’s presentation was, without a shadow of a doubt, the real deal on modern techniques that absolutely do work on helping launch and, most importantly, sustain a unique, individualized, profitable music career.
The career and entrepreneurship ideas presented at Eastman’s CMA presentation should be used as a blueprint for every music school deciding to teach their students how to be incredibly marketable with their musical gifts.
So what were these new, groundbreaking ideas?
Sure, you have heard the buzzwords behind each one before – branding, social media, music technology, etc. – but you may have never heard any professional elocute so magnificently on these subjects as it pertains to building an incredible music career.
Today, I disclose several of the most valuable secrets I learned at this event.
5. How Two Jazz Geeks Brought In $10 Million Dollars Per Year
If you want to make a successful, profitable musical event happen, the blueprint was made exceptionally clear at Eastman’s CMA conference.
Two brilliant musicians and businessmen, Mark Iacona and John Nugent, shared their experiences and very impressive numbers behind their internationally acclaimed musical event, the Xerox International Jazz Festival, based in Rochester, NY.
So how successful is the Xerox International Jazz Festival? In 2014, they had an attendance of over 196,000 patrons seeing 325 concerts. Over half of the festival attendees went to 10+ shows, with the average patron spending $500+ during their stay in Rochester.
How have these passionate jazz lovers and businessmen received the support from the city of Rochester to put on this show? After all, with so many tourists, the city could be figuratively flooded in such a large-scale event.
Well, it’s quite simple really – John and Mark worked with local vendors and the city itself to stimulate incredible revenue growth for local businesses.
On average, the entire economic return for the city of Rochester after putting on the Xerox Jazz Festival is $10 million dollars per year.
That’s eight figures! For jazz!
If you want to put on a concert, festival, conference, or event, you don’t have to promise someone ten million dollars.
But, if you can provide for your community a stimulus that exists outside of the value of the music itself, such as an effort to bring in tourists that will inevitably purchase from local small businesses, you have for yourself a winner of an approach to get the music you love out to a larger world.
On the next page, a US Navy Band trumpeter evolves into a social media guru, disclosing to us the one secret to building an audience.
4. A Classical Trumpeter Becomes a Social Media Maven, Showing Us the One Real Way to Build Trust With Our Audience
Doesn’t it seem like so many people you know talk about the importance of social media in a music/arts career, but then they themselves have no idea about how to actually make it work successfully?
Any musician can sign up for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, ReverbNation, BandCamp, Google Plus, MeetUp, SoundCloud, MySpace, Tumblr, TheSixtyOne.
But if you don’t know what to do for building an audience on these platforms, then these profiles will have exceptionally little value for you and your music career.
Enter Steve Haase, former US Navy Band trumpeter turned HubSpot employee and insightful social media expert.
Steve’s take on social media is that it should not be used to self promote for the sake of self promotion.
Rather, musicians should employ empathy in their social media offerings, providing their audience with music, messages, articles that will resonate and, most importantly, provide value.
A great example of someone doing this is alternative hip-hop artist Saul Williams. Saul’s music, lyrics, and general image would be attractive to people who like the following:
- Intensely poetic style of lyricism
- Civil and political rights activists
- Hip-hop
- Alternative, “not mainstream” genres and images
Understanding these key elements that frequently appear in Saul’s music, overall message, and image, Steve Haase showed us how Saul Williams builds and engages his audience.
Building audience example: In response to the civil rights controversies recently happening in Ferguson, MO, Saul Williams put on a concert benefiting charities dedicated to stopping police brutality and helping people in jail be able to pay for bail.
By advertising this kind of show on social media, Saul Williams is expanding his reach and image to an audience that may know about the Ferguson events but not Saul’s music. Thus, he is positively promoting an image of himself while promoting his music for the value of others.
That is how every musician who wants to make a career should think.
Engaging audience example: Understanding that his audience base is mostly in the college market and a little older than that, Saul posts intriguing articles on his site that he knows will connect to his younger audience, such as a post on how a new video game teaches you poetry.
He posts frequently on social media, a maneuver that wins him many shares, likes, and ultimately impressions and free advertising for his facebook page and personal website. Basically brilliant.
By understanding what resonates with your audience, you can essentially have an incredible career by giving to them what they like. Don’t be a selfish musician who promotes only for self-promotion – be a giving artist who provides musical, economic, political, or simply entertainment value for entire communities of people.
3. Does Justin Bieber Have a Strong Brand? Marketing Specialist Judith Ricker Rightfully Doesn’t Think So, But I Do
In an enlightening presentation from Eastman alum and marketing specialist Judith Ricker, we learn what the origination of the word “branding” is.
Brand is etymologically based from the an Old English word meaning “burning stick.”
The Old English word comes from an Indo-European infinitive that means To Be Hot.
Judith advocates that musicians should develop a brand, a brand that helps them, well, stay hot.
The definition of a brand, according to Judith, may surprise you:
A brand is a unified set of persuasive promises that differentiates the brand from others in a positive, relevant and personally compelling way with its stakeholders.
Basically, a brand is not simply a word, a catchphrase, or even a product – it is a message backed up by delivery that is interesting to people who are into the brand.
I mostly agree with her definition, but we will get to my viewpoint in a moment.
Using this as the basis of the definition behind branding, Judith shows us eminent examples of how musicians brand themselves.
Judith believes that all successful musicians have a core brand, which I agree with. She believes this brand is created by solidifying your image, identity, and positioning in your marketplace versus other brands.
She then points to examples like Yo-Yo Ma, a classical cellist who has stayed true to his brand of bridging classical cello performance with the image and sometimes music of Eastern cultures, or Renee Fleming, an opera diva who consistently markets herself on her website and promotional materials with theatrics reminiscent of an actual opera performance.
Judith then points to Justin Bieber as someone who doesn’t have a strong brand. Using Judith’s definition of what a brand is, she is completely correct – he has not retained his core image since being picked up by Usher several years ago.
Ultimately, I disagree with Judith on Justin Bieber not having a strong brand though because I don’t think a brand has to be positive and retaining a core in order to be strong. In music, for example we have seen Madonna’s image and brand consistently reinvented and changed over the years in order for her to stay fresh.
We have also seen some musicians use their scandalous personal lives as advertising leverage for their brand.
Negative publicity and reckless behavior for Justin Bieber has become part of Justin’s new, “bad boy” image, which is a direct evolution of his young teenager, “good boy” image.
I’m not advocating that anyone should start acting like Justin Bieber, but his brand alone does generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year for him, his label, for the companies that license his name, etc.
In the end, the biggest point from Judith’s branding seminar isn’t the semantics of whether Bieber is a hot brand or not – it’s about creating a distinct identity that consistently delivers a value cemented in a strong core to an audience.
How are you going to brand yourself against the tens of thousands of other musicians in this world? How are you going to position your identity in this competitive market?
The next two ideas will give you some insight…
2. If You Don’t “Get” Technology, Don’t Worry – Your iPhone May Be All You Need To Get Started
Having live videos of your performing can be incredibly valuable for your music career.
In order to create a compelling video of you performing, you have to play well, with passion, and with multiple camera angles.
What’s more interesting, a single camera shoot or a multi-camera shoot?
Right, the multi-camera shoot, because when you are able to shoot different views of your performing, you provide visual depth to accompany the emotional gravitas of your music making.
Unfortunately, the multi-camera approach can cost over $2,000 if you choose to buy multiple premium cameras for your shoot, like four GoPro cameras.
Luckily, according to Michael Reed, Eastman faculty member who teaches musicians how to integrate technology into their careers, you don’t need more than your iPhone and your friends’ iPhones.
All you need to do is purchase the RecoLive multi-camera recording app, get a couple iPhones together, and make for yourself an incredible multi-camera shoot for a price that is infinitely cheaper than using four “GoPro” cameras or a professional video recording studio.
1. Music Is a Social Art
At an event like Chamber Music America, one thing is clear – the most social musicians leave with the most connections, business cards, music & money making opportunities, and more.
In performance and in our general musical lives, collaborating with other people is essential to our success. Music is always a social art. Even if you are a solo electronic musician who literally does not work with any other musicians, there is a social element to sharing your music with the world.
Enter successful jazz artist Darrell Grant, Portland State University professor who knows how important collaboration is to the career of a musician.
According to Grant, when you collaborate in music, you can leverage other people’s abilities and statuses to augment your own. Collaboration can also help us find ground that wasn’t before tread.
A prime example of new ground tread in classical music thanks to collaboration and social media was the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, a phenomenal event that brought together dozens of high-level musicians from around the globe to perform classical music broadcast on the world’s most popular video streaming website.
Barriers of entry in collaboration do exist, as Grant points. These include money, not knowing who to ask, and having too much pride to ask for “help.”
At the end of the day, it is a silly thought from a business perspective to think that collaboration is merely asking for “help” – it is an opportunity that you can leverage to augment your own music career while helping others enhance theirs.
Final Thoughts
The answer to having a great music career couldn’t be laid out any more clearly than at Eastman’s pre-conference presentation at Chamber Music America.
When you combine collaboration with cemented core branding, DIY multi-camera smart phone technology, social media audience building and engagement, and associating your music with greater economic and/or social causes and values, you have, without any shadow of a doubt, the blueprint behind success for a musician in 2015.
Notice how different this value-giving, community-engaging, customizable, revenue-oriented, and modern, 21st-century method is much different than many traditional music school values for creating a great career have been, such as those values that advocate winning lots of competitions or putting all of your time into attaining the coveted audition into one of two dozen professional orchestras in America that can provide a substantial living.
Times are changing very rapidly, and as musicians, we must adapt or our potential careers could perish. It is truly inspiring to see schools that do have such strong ties to tradition, like the Eastman School of Music, allocate energy to building strong resources for modern, career-first musicians.
The next morning at Chamber Music America, when the main festivities began, keynote speaker Jane Chu, Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, stated to the conference attendees that $700 billion dollars of the national GDP came from the arts.
So how are you going to tap into this nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollar market?
Well, I know how you can, and Eastman does too.
When our collective musical vocabulary becomes large enough to not only understand the principles behind harmony, counterpoint, analysis, and so on, but also branding, marketing, and bringing our product to a market in order to generate money in our music careers, our educations as professional, career-obtaining musicians can only then be considered complete.
