Choose your audience, choose your brand

After talking to many musicians on different occasions and trying to find who is more likely to be able to tell me about their promotion efforts online, I realized that my chances of finding an active online musician are much higher among young musicians (those between 20 to 40 years old). It is rare to find an older classical musician who promotes himself online and is not skeptical about the whole online business.

I guess the same works for the audience. A musician can really choose his audience by choosing where and how he promotes himself. If an artist wants a young audience, he has to focus his efforts on online resources that include social networks such as Myspace and/or Facebook. If a musician is aiming at the traditional older classical music crowd, he has to focus on traditional advertising, including the written press like newspapers and magazines.

By choosing an audience and a method of promotion, an artist can shape how he is perceived as a musician and what his brand character is.

Not surprisingly, all pop and rock musicians, who naturally aim for a younger audience, are very familiar with online promotion. But classical musicians are legging behind, with a much smaller number of online pioneers in the field.

I hope the current generation of upcoming classical musicians will change this equation.

Interview with cellist Yoed Nir

Yoed Nir is a great cellist who plays classical as well as jazz and pop music. He also improvises, writes and arranges music in all styles.

When did you start playing?

Yoed: I started playing when I was eight years old. I went to the conservatory in Tel Aviv and the cello teacher was nice so I picked the cello.

Did you love it?

Yoed: At the beginning I was too young to know. But the teacher was so nice that I kept going to the lessons. After a while I stated to really like the cello.

What are your career goals?

Yoed: I am a freelance cellist. I am a very versatile cellist. I can play classical, jazz, rock, pop and world music. So I'm doing my own recitals and I also record and play shows with singers and bands. I arrange different songs and pieces for strings instruments, quartets or small orchestras. I arrange a piece for a cello ensemble and record all the parts by myself and make it sound like a small string ensemble. For example, in the singer Yael Naim's album I recorded all the string parts myself.  You can hear it in the songs "Shelcha" and "Pachad."

How do you promote yourself?

Yoed: I have a website and I posted some YouTube videos. I make connections with many musicians that I meet every time I play a concert. People call me and hire me for concerts and recordings. I sometimes send an email with all my information to a contractor or to composers.

What's in theses emails?

Yoed: I write three or four sentences about the highlights of my career and I put a link to my website and to my videos. This is the most important thing for me, that the person I'm contacting could actually listen to my music.

When did you start promoting yourself online?

Yoed: I started it about three years ago. When I lived in Israel people knew me and I recorded in more than 200 albums in Israel and Europe. But when I came to NY I understood that I have to use a website and post my music online so people who don't know me can quickly understand who I am as a musician and what I sound like.

What did you use offline?

Yoed: Nothing.

Do you use social networks to promote yourself?

Yoed: I use Myspace.

Why Myspace as opposed to Facebook?

Yoed: First of all because Myspace was around before Facebook. I think that every respectable musician should have Myspace.

Why?

Yoed: Myspace is one step before a website. Or it's an addition to a website.

But why is my space better than Facebook?

Yoed: Because you can put music on Myspace. The interface of Myspace is very comfortable.

Does it help?

Yoed: From time to time people contact me through Myspace and ask me for a recording session or for an arrangement. It is mostly for non classical music.

Do you notice other musicians' online promotion? 

Yoed: More or less the same as me.

Do you have any advice to give to musicians who promote themselves online?

Yoed: My advice is keep working hard on your music and practice your instrument, doesn't matter what kind of music you play. You should always try to be at your best. At the same time it is just as important to keep active networking and learn how to best promote yourself with the same intensity that you invest in your music.

Interview with violist, Victoria Voronyansky

This week, I interviewed Victoria Voronyansky, an established violist and pedagogue.

When did you start playing?

Victoria: I started playing the violin when I was five and a half, almost six. In my school in Kiev, Ukraine, they started you first in theory and ear training to see if you have good pitch. If you were good they told you to play the violin if you didn't have such good pitch they told you to play the piano. When I came t0 the US at the age of 13, I started playing the viola as well. I got into the Manhattan School of Music pre-college and I was promised a scholarship if I were to play the viola in addition to playing the violin. That's how I started playing the viola.

Did you love it? 

Victoria: Initially I was really confused. I didn't speak English very well and I wasn't sure what I was suppose to play. I thought I was going to play the cello. On the first day of school I showed up at the chamber music class and was upset to find out that there is already a cellist there. Then my coach gave me the viola, a $40 a year rental.

What are your career goals? 

Victoria: At this moment I mostly teach and I have my own private studio, which took years to build. I have close to 40 students. I really love teaching and I enjoy it very much. I played chamber music for many years and I was a member of a string quartet that was very successful for two years. I also had a duo with a pianist for several years and enjoyed it very much. 

As my studio began to grow I had to make a conscious decision to dedicate more of my energy to teaching. Currently I am working on my own CD and once I finish the CD I will resume my performance career and do my best to balance it with teaching. I have several students who would like to be my teaching assistants, so once I resume a full scale performing schedule I know that I can count on them to make sure that the studio continues to thrive and my students get the attention that they need.

How do you promote yourself?

Victoria: As a teacher I don't promote myself. All my students came to me through recommendations of other students, parents or teachers. I used to work as an assistant for professor Heidi Castleman in the Juilliard school and she recommended me to several people. 

As a performing artist I have a website on which I have a mailing list. People who hear my performances can go to my website and sign up to be on my mailing list. 

So what happens if people are on your list?

Victoria:  If I have a new recording or a performance coming up or anything that would be of interest to fans, I write to the people on my list and let them know. When you perform you need to establish a fan base, people who will almost always come o your performances, and you have to continuously keep in touch with them and have something interesting and of high quality to offer them. In my experience I felt that bombarding people with too much information annoys people and makes them feel that your events are not special. Try to balance their desire for seeing you on stage with how often you appear.

When did you start promoting yourself online?

Victoria: I started promoting myself online around the year 2000. First it was like having a business card online. It was just a desire to have a website to advertise what I do and keep track of it. Shortly after that I started teaching a class in Juilliard called "The Recording Project," which was aimed at students presenting themselves in the best possible light when recording. 

What do you mean?

Victoria: Students had to be screened for competitions and auditions by submitting a tape, so the goal was to help them learn what they needed to do differently when recording versus when performing on stage. I started putting the course material online for students to use as reference and I was published by the Journal of the American Viola Society, so I started putting these articles on my website as well. 

As I  started to perform more I needed to promote myself in order to bring in an audience.

What did you use offline?

Victoria: Before a concert or a workshop I would send out press releases to local newspapers and I would get in touch with local businesses, and offer them discounted tickets if they allowed me to hang fliers for the event in their business.

Do you use social networks to promote yourself?

Victoria: No, but somebody started a fan group for me on Facebook. It wasn't my initiative but I'm grateful that he did that.

Why?

Victoria: He has been publicising my events.

Does it help?

Victoria: Yes, I get audience from many different sources. 

D o you notice other musicians' online promotion?

Victoria: Yes, I notice that I really enjoy when musicians have their own blog. I would like to do it in the near future. It's an excellent way for the audience to connect with the artists because it gives them a direct connection and humanises the artists, takes them off the stage and presents them as humans.

Do you have any advice to give to musicians who promote themselves online?

Victoria: First, make sure you have a website and a highly qualified person to design and maintain the website. 

Anything else to say?

Victoria: I wish musicians would feel at ease with the process of developing a flexible approach to a music career. Right from the start, they should familiarize themselves with chamber music, orchestra, teaching and performing solo. I wish musicians tried to develop love and passion for the many facets of the profession. 

Why?

Victoria: Because their career can be significantly more fulfilling if they develop this approach and broaden their interest in music and in other people.  I wish they would become more aware of the joy of sharing their music with others rather than fixating on a perfectionist attitude. Basically, they should take the focus off of themselves and shift it to music and those with whom they share their music.

Choose your license

Musicians, artists, scientists and authors no longer have to dread what will happen with their creative works once they are published online. And surprisingly, relieving themselves of this fear need not involve exorbitant lawyer fees.

Creative Commons provides a variety of licensing options that allow a musician to determine how his work can be used and allow users to enjoy his work legally. There is a huge gap between laws concerning intellectual property, which laws date to the signing of the Constitution, and the technology available today. For example, if a musician publishes an MP3 online, absent an explicit license, it is not clear that it is legal to listen to, download or copy the file.

By proving a variety of licensing options, Creative Commons helps the musician determine how the file can be used. For instance, the license can allow the file to be listened to but not copied or shared. It gives the artist greater freedom and control over his creative output, while affording him continued protection under the copyright regime.

All artists should consider using Creative Commons licenses when publishing a photo, an MP3 or any other work they created online in order to allow their audience to legally enjoy the work.

Be your own record label

An independent musician does not have to have a contract with a large recording company in order to sell CDs these days. If you're lucky enough to have a contract with Deutsche Grammophon I wouldn't cancel it. But if not, there are other options.

There are many websites on the Internet through which musicians can sell their independent CDs. In common situations a musician would send his CDs to the online store and would pay a $4 processing charge per CD. The online store would sell the CDs and pay the artist directly; no distributor is needed. So if a musician's CD sold for $12, he would make $8 for each CD sold.

Another option is to sell CDs through a company that gives a musician a website specifically for selling his CDs or DVDs. The company takes care of all transactions, gives the website publicity and provides "buy" buttons for the products on other websites. The musician keeps 80% of the revenues and the company keeps 20%.

Exploring these options online is very easy and doesn't take too much time and effort. Here are some resources that a musician can explore and use to sell his music online:

CD Baby
Backstage Commerce

A cold night stroll and half a concert

Yesterday I went to hear a beautiful concert performed by members of the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society ("BCMS"). The concert started at 8:00 p.m. and I dragged along a friend, convincing her that it's worth going all the way to Brooklyn on a cold night to hear the Mendelssohn Octet. 

I looked at BCMS' website in order to find out where the concert is as it was the first time I attended one of their events. I was in a hurry and didn't want to spend too much time on the site, but I couldn't find the address of the concert immediately so I clicked on "reservation" and found the address.  I noticed that it was a 17 minutes walk from the train and I told my friend that we'll take a taxi from the subway. She agreed and we took the train to Clark street in Brooklyn. 

I printed the directions from Google Maps and was proud of myself for being so prepared, which is atypical of me. We started walking, and to our pleasant surprise we found a taxi right away and guided the confused driver to the address using his GPS. We arrived at a very nice brownstone and rang the doorbell, thinking to ourselves this was going to be a typical "house" concert, with a lot of good food and delicious drinks. A young man opened the door and told usthat the concert is downstairs. We walked down the stairs and rang for a while at another door. A woman opened the door and told us we were at the wrong place.

I called my husband who was still at his office and asked him to look on the BCMS website  and tell us where the concert is. He looked for a while and eventually found out it was at a church five minutes away from the subway stop. At this point it was already 8:25 and my friend and I were freezing. So we took another taxi to the right address and enjoyed the remainder of this beautiful concert.

After the concert, I spoke to the organisers of the series, all of whom I know, and they told me this is not the first time someone shows up at their home office instead of at the church for a concert.

One obvious pitfall to be wary of when promoting yourself online is directing your audience to the wrong address!

Show your face

Facebook is a great tool for musicians to promote themselves online. You can create a profile as an individual or as an ensemble. You can post photos, videos, write comments and write about your performances. An easy way to invite people to a performance is to create an event and invite your Facebook friends to the event. When creating an event you can add photos and videos to the invitation. 

Creating a group on Facebook is also very easy and allows an ensemble or a series to create its own character and share its profile with others. 

Creating a profile or a group on Facebook is free but it needs to be maintained and updated regularly in order to be effective and attract members and viewers. 

Here's an example of an ensemble making use of a Facebook group.

Get started

One simple way to maintain an online presence is to build a website. 

Suitable for both individual performers and ensembles, websites can serve as a centralized repository of information. Performers can post head shots and other pictures, and they are good places for resumes and sample recordings. For ensembles, websites present great opportunities to explain the ensemble's focus, such as specializing in music of living composers or unusual instrumentation.

A website does not have to be expensive or complicated. There are a number of free tools that can be used to construct basic websites, including:

Dynamod
Webs
Weebly

Musicians online

Classical musicians have many options to choose from when promoting themselves online. The first step in the process is to consider the Internet as a promotion tool. In this blog I'm going to explore the different ways by which musicians can promote themselves in today's world, using  the Internet.