Daniel Sokolovskiy’s Blog: posts tagged Marketing

Googleless

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:32:34 +0100

I’ve finally got rid of Google Analytics from all my websites. It’s no longer here at dsokolovskiy.com, daniellesden.com or psytranceguide.com. Yay!

There were many things I didn’t like about Google Analytics for a long time: it’s a service run by one of the world’s largest companies whose business model relies on intrusive ads; it conflicts with all modern privacy regulations like GDPR (and even declared illegal in certain countries); it’s bloated, with an outdated UI that is overkill for small websites like mine.

Upon my recent research, I was surprised to find how many alternatives are available today, even though it once seemed that Google Analytics had a monopoly on the market. That may have been true several years ago, making it the default option for me, but fortunately, that’s no longer the case.

In case you’re curious, I’ve switched to a service called Plausible. There are other good services around now too, but I liked this one after giving it a 30-day trial. It’s a simple, open-source, lightweight script that doesn’t use cookies and doesn’t collect personal data. I also like the way the dashboard looks, which is an important factor to me too.

This service isn’t free. It costs me £19 a month for my current configuration which is more than I pay for hosting and domain name services combined. However, if you think about it, Google Analytics wasn’t ‘free’ either, I just paid with a different currency – the privacy of my website’s visitors. I’d rather pay with money; at least that feels fair.

Look at the right metrics

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:33:49 +0100

A couple of years ago when I started jogging to eventually be able to run a half marathon, I used to look at my pace as a key metric to measure my progress. Any pro runner would laugh at reading this, but I thought the faster I could run, the faster my body would adapt to sustaining that pace for a longer distance. I know it’s naive, but at least there was some logic in that thinking. Besides, running fast felt ‘cooler’.

No surprise I barely progressed. I made it to the 10-kilometre runs, but couldn’t progress any further. I looked at my pace which improved over time, but I couldn’t understand why I didn’t come close to my goal after months of running.

Then I made an effort to learn a few things, bought a running watch, and switched my attention to a whole different metric: heart rate. Turned out that if I stayed below a certain threshold of my heart rate, I could run way longer! There is another thing called cadence, which is another important metric I never even heard of before at that time (a number of strides per minute), and understanding them both has helped me tremendously. After that eureka moment, I was able to run 20 kilometres and beyond in no time.

That made me think about how often we are looking at the wrong metrics, in any domain of our lives. For example, music producers measure their career progress by the sales charts. Content creators gauge their success by the number of page views. Professionals assess their progress by the number of completed to-dos. And the list goes on and on.

Whether you are a DJ trying to build an international career, a marketer building a sales funnel on the landing page, or a jogger aspiring to run a half marathon, be sure to look at the right metrics.

Fleming on genres, naming, and energy levels

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 01:22:33 +0100

In 2020, John 00 Fleming gave an interview with the Finish More Music YouTube channel, and I wrote out some interesting parts from it.

On stepping away from genres

What I’ve learned recently is to step away from genres because if you get tied up in a genre, there’s a thing that you had to be part of it. Stepping away from any genre gives you more freedom and it allows you to venture into different [musical] worlds and not being tarnished from the Internet people, like I was associated with Trance, for example. They expect me to play Trance but where Trance was originally in the underground world it’s very mainstream now and then you just letting Trance people down because I think I’m playing Trance and they call it something else. It just adds these layers and layers of confusion. So step away from it, people accept it plus they’re discovering new music by accident, so it opens you up to more audiences.

On renaming Global Trance Grooves to JOOF Radio

My old show was called Global Trance Grooves, I think it was 17 years old when I let it go. I should’ve let it go years before but I wanted to get Edition 200, it was so special to me. And it was like this switch from when the name change, the next month we saw the plays fly up, we saw it on DI.FM, on Soundcloud, Insomniac Radio came in straight away and took it on board which is a really big deal.

Go and ask 16-year old kids, what is Trance to them. Even if you click through the Beatport 100 top-selling Trance tracks, that’s their introduction to Trance music and it’s predominately very powerful, uplifting, vocal, big arpeggiators, 138 BPM and it’s that sound, whereas I remember and you probably remember Trance for something completely different years ago. So by letting go off that, this is a generational shift, the sound evolved to what this sound is now, a big euphoric main room festival sound. Whereas Progressive House for example reminds me what Trance used to be, the Progressive Trance great days, Hooj Choons, Platipus, that stuff. So having the word ‘Trance’ was confusing. The old generation got it, singing appraisers for me ‘Yay John’s hanging onto that true spirit’, but the next generation would confuse, so I was losing the next generation. They’d see the word ‘Trance’ in a radio show and not even click through it just presuming it’ll be that vocal epic kind of sound. So just that simple realignment, getting rid of that genre tag, it just opened the doors.

On energy levels

Some of the DJs just want to start off with an impact, but if the energy is up here an hour or half an hour in, where do you go from there? You’re already there, so then it seems to go flat. If you’ve just been punch-punch-punch for an hour, that impact of that high energy does wear off. That’s why to me it’s like a journey, like watching a movie: if there’s a massive manic car chase scene with gunshots and everything going for an hour, you just lose interest in the film. It has to be broken up, so when the chase comes you’re like ‘Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!’, so you’ve impacted with the energy again.

There is a lot more on the studio sessions and music industry, so definitely watch the whole interview.

Why you should run a blog

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 10:29:54 +0100

And where to start, what to write about, and why you shouldn’t blog on social networks

I enjoy reading the blogs of various people: marketers, designers, developers, promoters, entrepreneurs, editors, and specialists in other fields. And I noticed that among my reading list, there are very few representatives of the music industry. And I’m not talking about media, I’m talking about specialists’ blogs of people who would share their personal experiences.

And then I thought: what if someone wants to start a blog but does not know how? Or someone doubts why they need a blog when they have Instagram?

Whether you are a DJ, a music producer, a label manager, or a specialist of any kind (not just in the music industry), I’d like to encourage more good blogs, so in this post I’ll talk about the benefits of blogging and where to start.

There are different kinds of blogs
First, let me clarify that blogs’ content and purpose can be different. I distinguish at least two main types: personal and professional blogs.

A personal blog is when the author talks about daily life, posts family photos and reflects on current events. If the author is not a well-known media personality, such a blog is unlikely to be of interest to anyone except a small number of people he or she knows in person.

A professional blog is when the specialist shares the intricacies of his profession, talks about the projects he has done, the problems and their solutions, new skills and useful observations. Such blogs are interesting to read, even if unfamiliar with the author.

Here I talk about the second type of blog specifically.

Why blogging

When I talk to someone about starting a blog, I often hear a question along the lines of “Who’s going to read me?”. And it’s a reasonable question: If you don’t already have an audience of your own, you’ll probably be the only visitor of your blog, at least for a while. In addition, the Internet already has almost everything.

However, in my opinion, the main benefit of a blog is not that people read you at all. If you write interestingly and for a long period of time, sooner or later, you are sure to get an audience that reads you, but that’s a nice consequence, kind of a bonus side-effect and not a reason to start writing.

Here are some good reasons to blog:

To systematize your experience. Knowing and understanding something are not the same thing. When you explain something by writing a blog, you understand it much better. That’s exactly what happened to me with the advice series: it would seem that if I’m advising someone something, I’m probably good at it myself, right? But the truth is that I have become good at some things because I explain them to others. Thanks to the blog, the experience is better learned and solidified.

In the advice series, I share my experiences and answer readers’ questions about music production, DJing, performing, marketing, management, and other aspects of the music industry

To improve your skills: writing, language, discipline. It takes practice to become good at something. Being able to write clearly and present your thoughts in a clear, structured way is no exception. And who writes clearly, thinks clearly. Such skills are worth cultivating.

To spread knowledge about yourself and your business. There is an interesting thing with specialist blogs: when you read the behind-the-scenes details of some profession, you inevitably notice that the author clearly knows his stuff, since he understands and talks about all these subtleties. That is how the reputation of an expert is formed. And such a reputation builds trust and opens up new opportunities.

Marketing by sharing by Jason Fried

To save time so you don’t have to explain the same thing over and over again. Imagine that you’ve written a large, comprehensive post about how you do business. And then in a conversation, someone asks you about this topic. And now, instead of telling everything all over again, you can kindly offer the person to read about it on your blog if he or she is interested. For example, I wrote this very post for this exact reason because I had to explain it several times.

To help people. Most of the time you probably won’t even know it. People tend to react more strongly to things they don’t like than to be thankful for things that help them. Nevertheless, rest assured that the knowledge you share will help others learn something new, come to unusual conclusions, or inspire development in their field. Isn’t that great?

These are definitely not all the reasons for blogging, but they’re good enough to get you started.

Run a blog for yourself to systematize experiences, improve skills, and spread knowledge

What to write about

Let’s say you’ve decided to blog. And then you might be confused: “So what is there to write about?”. The thing is, when you know something, all things seem simple and obvious to you, and you’d be like: “Everybody knows that!”

My advice is to write about what you’re doing and explain why you’re doing it that way:

For example, an engineer does mastering of the tracks. How does he do it? What kind of equipment does he use? How is gear better than software plug-ins, and is it better? Does stem mastering really worth it? How to prepare tracks for mastering? How much headroom in volume should a producer leave and why? Is it necessary to do a separate mastering for each streaming platform? Is there really a “volume war” and should producers be worried? Can a DJ play non-mastered tracks? Why do we need mastering at all?

It would seem an ordinary routine that an engineer faces every day, but there is so much to tell! And so it is with almost all professions. Talk about it, and the blog will become your best portfolio.

Another thing I advise you to do is to define for yourself some topics or categories. For example, on this blog I write about DJing, performing, music, marketing, productivity, and professional growth. You don’t have to think of all of such topics ahead of time, but it may be easier for the authors to start writing by identifying a few similar topics in their field.

Where to start

First, you need to decide where you want to write: on a third-party service or on your own standalone blog.

Third-party services are so-called blogging platforms: sites on which you sign up and start a blog. Probably the most popular ones are Tumblr, Blogger, Medium.

A standalone blog is a site that runs on your server and is under your control. I strongly recommend this option, and I explain why below.

To start your own standalone blog, you need three things:

Domain	The address where the blog is available. For example, dsokolovskiy.com
Hosting	The server where the files are stored.
Engine	The program which runs the blog.

For some people, these words may seem very frightening, but in fact, buying a domain name and renting hosting is not more difficult than signing up on Medium or purchasing anything online. The engine installation is somewhat different, but it depends on what to choose.

Running and maintaining a blog costs money: a domain name will cost about $10 per year, and hosting is roughly another $20 per year. The engines are usually free. Here are some popular names: WordPress, Drupal, Aegea.

My blog runs on Aegea. The beauty of this engine is that it has no typical “admin panels” with complicated user interfaces. Aegea makes blogging as easy as possible, and it’s a pleasure to write in it. It also has everything you need to make it look and work properly right out of the box: automatic typography, search, tags, drafts, a mobile version, a built-in audio player, comments (you can disable them if you don’t need them), and much, much more. By comparison, on WordPress or Drupal you would need a programmer and a designer to do all that, but with Aegea, you install it, and it just works.

The Aegea website visually demonstrates how the engine works

Why not Instagram

Some readers may wonder, “Why bother when social media is around? Why set up and pay for a standalone blog when you can do the same on Instagram? Why do all that when you can just as much systematize your experience, improve your skills, and spread the knowledge on a Facebook page? You can blog on social media, right?”

Can you blog on social media – yes, you can. You can do anything, frankly! But that said, there are fundamental disadvantages to social media that are worth keeping in mind.

Anything is possible, but

In my opinion, here are a few major flaws:

You don’t own the content. Everything you write and post on social networks belongs to corporations, not to you. In practice, this means that your years of work can disappear in a flash because the social network closes down (think of MySpace). Or because the service will become hopelessly outdated and no one is interested in it (look at LiveJournal). Or because moderators will find your post inappropriate to their guidelines and block your profile. Choosing social media as your primary platform for publishing thoughtful posts does not value your time and efforts. And all of this is true for third-party blogging platforms as well, which is why I recommend starting your own standalone blog.

Form affects content. Each social network defines a certain format, and you have to adjust the content to fit it. For example, you cannot publish more than 280 characters on Twitter in one post. On Instagram, you cannot post just text without a picture. Facebook, as experiments suggest, reduces the reach of link posts, so people get creative, publish a picture, and leave the link in the comment below it. Or at some point, the author realizes that if he takes a long break between posts, fewer people like them, and when fewer people like the post, the social network algorithms consider this content uninteresting and don’t show it to the rest of the audience, and eventually the race for engagement begins.

You are not in control. If the social network changes its design tomorrow, and not for the better, there is nothing you can do about it because you are not in control. If a social network starts running ads through every post you share, there’s nothing you can do about it because you are not in control. If a social network removes some of the functionality you’ve been relying on, as you’ve probably guessed, there’s nothing you can do about it because you are not in control. Can you easily find any of your posts from ten years ago? Or edit it? Or structure it in any meaningful way? No, no, and no, because you have no control over anything on social media.

On social media, you don’t own the content and have no control over anything. Relying on social media means not valuing your time and efforts

There’s nothing like that with your blog, and it’s exactly the opposite. You have full access to all texts, images, and files. You are free to decide whether the design of your blog will change or remain exactly the same twenty years from now. You can add or remove features as you need them. You can organize everything the way you want.

“Wait a minute!”, some probably will argue. “But social media has an entire audience! Instagram has one billion monthly active users, and my blog will have one person. So what, are you suggesting that I should just give up on social media altogether?”

Well, it is naive to think that once you create a new Facebook page, a Telegram channel, or an account on Medium.com, you will immediately have thousands of readers because, supposedly, these platforms have millions and billions of users. Winning and nurturing the audience is challenging and takes a lot of time no matter where you do it (and if such a task is even needed; and let me remind you that this is not what really matters in a specialist’s blog).

Personally, I have many concerns about social media, even beyond the flaws mentioned above. But even so, I am not yet ready to give them up completely. At the same time, nothing stops you from writing good posts on your blog and then sharing them anywhere, including social networks – I, for example, do just that.

Can we drop social media?

Happy blogging!

Pros and cons of releasing music directly via a distributor

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 08:57:46 +0100

Websites of popular artist music distribution services

What are the pros and cons of releasing a track directly through a distributor, without a label? What are the pitfalls of this process?

Vlad Zabolotsky

What we’re talking about
First, let me explain a little bit for those who don’t know. The concept of a “release,” or digital release of music, means making that music available for listening on streaming services and DJ stores. The biggest ones are Spotify and Beatport.

The difficulty is that, unlike regular services like YouTube or Soundcloud, where anyone can create an account and upload music, streaming services and DJ stores don’t work that way.

Spotify and Beatport only accept music through special intermediary services — distributors. When music is traditionally released through labels, it is the labels that take care of all the distribution work. Like this:

producer → label → distributor → services and stores

However, what Vlad is asking about is the release of music directly, that is, without the label’s involvement. Like so:

producer → ~~label →~~ distributor → services and stores

That’s what I’m going to talk about.

Vlad, I’ll tell you right away that I personally didn’t release music directly through distributors. All my releases are signed on the labels, so I didn’t deal with distributors. What I do know on this subject is my general knowledge of the music industry, so take it with a grain of salt.

Why release music on your own

I see three main reasons why someone might want to release music on their own, without labels:

Timing control. With labels it’s usually like this: you send them a demo, and wait. You wait a week, two weeks, sometimes three. Then the label says: “Sorry, your track doesn’t work for us.” You send it to another label, you wait again. If you’re lucky, they accept the track, and then you wait again – for the release date. Some labels have dozens of releases in the pipeline, so sometimes you have to wait for your release for half a year or more. With self-releases, you don’t have this problem – you release as much as you want, whenever you want.

How to send a demo to a record label

Financial control. All the labels I know have a rather complicated, non-transparent, and slow reporting system. As a rule, the sales report comes either quarterly or semiannually, reflecting the previous reporting period. That said, some labels put a minimum threshold on royalty transfers of $100 to simplify accounting, meaning they withhold anything below that amount for themselves, and thus aspiring producers may not see any income for years. To be fair, sales and streaming really don’t bring in much, so it’s not the labels’ fault here. Anyway, by releasing music on your own, you see all your pennies earned and can withdraw them at any time.

Creative freedom. Usually labels release music in a certain style, concept, and sound – it’s called a format. But sometimes they follow their own format so literally that they release tracks that are almost no different from each other. They say they are looking for originality, but in fact, they accept only the same-sounding tracks. The independent release of your own music allows you not to adjust to any format and make whatever you like.

Now I suggest we look at the specifics of distributor work.

Without a label, you can release whatever you want, whenever you want, and have 100% income from it

Cost

First, I think it’s important to understand what distributors are like and what their financial models are. Two of the most famous and popular ones are DistroKid and CD Baby; Spotify also recommends them.

Spotify: recommended distributors

These distributors have two fundamentally different payment models:

Subscription. DistroKid charges $20 a year for an unlimited number of releases. For that amount, you can have a release every week like Stan Kolev, but the key here is “per year”: if you don’t renew your subscription after your last paid period ends, all your music will be pulled off from the streaming services. In fact, if you choose a distributor with a subscription, you’ll basically be committed to paying every year for the rest of your life. DistroKid doesn’t take a commission, which means that 100% of your income goes to you.

It’s also worth noting that $20 a year is the minimum basic version with a limited set of features. For example, if you want to choose the exact future date of your release, that costs $36 a year.

One-time. CD Baby charges $10 for a single and $30 for an album, but only once for life. They take an additional 9% commission from the income, which leaves you with 91%.

CD Baby also has advanced versions which cost $30 for a single and $70 for an album respectively. The main difference between the regular and the “pro” versions is the publishing administration included in the price, we’ll talk about that below.

You should also have in mind the mastering and cover artworks cost, which in the case of self-release you also have to do yourself: either with your own money or with your own time.

For a self-release, you have to pay with your money and your time

Publishing

The main functions of a distributor are to put music on streaming platforms and then collect royalties from them, i.e. income. But income from music can come not only in this form, but also in other, less obvious ways: from the use of music in videos, from playback on Internet radio stations, and so on.

There are three main types of royalties: mechanical, synchronization, and public performance. I’ll write more about it someday

Now, by default, almost all distributors don’t collect these kinds of royalties. For example, some vlogger used your track in his video, and that video got millions of views. If you don’t worry about it beforehand, you won’t get anything out of that million views using your track, even though you could.

For example, DistroKid doesn’t collect royalties from anywhere except the platforms where it delivers music. The exception is YouTube: for an extra $5 per single and $15 per album per year, plus a 20% commission on revenue from YouTube.

CD Baby has a royalty fee collection included in the “pro” versions I talked about above. If your tracks get played on radio stations, clubs, or anywhere else, CD Baby will collect royalties to you as the author.

Those who work with DistroKid and other similar distributors usually have to use separate royalty collection services. For example, one such service is Songtrust. It costs $100 for a one-time registration, and then takes a 15% commission on the royalties collected.

Platforms

Every distributor has a list of platforms they deliver music to. As a rule, they all work with major streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, and others.

So, all such distributors don’t deliver music to Beatport, because you have to have a label to be placed on Beatport. For example, DistroKid technically does it, but your music ends up on their label page, where all the music they’ve distributed that way is mixed up, which isn’t great in my opinion. The only exception I’m aware of is the distributor called Record Union: for $60 a year, it will deliver music to many platforms, including Beatport, though publishing administration is not included.

Some producers create their own labels with the sole role of putting their own music on Beatport, but that’s another story.

To release directly or not

Everything I wrote above is distributor features that are important to consider. But whether they are pros or cons depends solely on your goals, plan, and strategy.

For example, some people can’t imagine releasing music without being on Beatport, while others care only about streaming services and don’t care about Beatport. Or someone releases a single a year, so it’s okay to pay $30 for distribution through CD Baby, and someone releases a single every few weeks, so DistroKid might be more suitable for them.

Whether or not to release music directly depends solely on your personal goals, plan, and strategy

Personally, I think that whatever distributor you choose, an independent release, unlike a label, won’t give you the most important thing, which is your name’s affiliation with the brand. It’s like a quality mark that others say, “Oh, that producer’s from Anjuna!” Well, or Drumcode, Armada, Toolroom, you name it — any credible label in their genre. When your name is associated with a label like that, it gives you extra value, credibility, and an audience, which in turn can help to open up new possibilities.

What record labels do

What’s more important to you is up to you.

DJs: hire photographers for your gigs

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 11:48:04 +0100

A few thoughts on the pictures from DJs’ gigs and advice based on my own failure

First of all, the most obvious: photos are a good thing. They’re personal memories that feel good to revisit and share with others. Who doesn’t love pictures?

Now the slightly less obvious: Pictures of DJs’ gigs are your work assets. If a DJ has good pictures from his gigs, it’s easier for promoters to work with him: to run an advertising campaign for the upcoming event, to sell tickets. Also, photos from performances help to remove fears of potential promoters: when you see a DJ behind the club gear in front of live people, you know that at least he has such experience, which means less chance that he will screw up (remember that decent DJs are pretty rare). And, of course, photos are great content for visual communication for your blogs and social media.

Read what about social media John Fleming and Ace Ventura

Finally, something that would seem unobvious or even wrong to many at first glance: making sure that a DJ gets photos of the gigs is the DJ’s own job. I’m not talking about how to get those gigs (that’s a big separate topic), but about the photos from them.

It’s the DJ’s job to get pictures of his gigs

When I was young and inexperienced, I used to think something like this: “Since the organizer is doing the event, he most likely hires a photographer. And since there’s going to be a photographer at the event, that means I, as the DJ, will have some great shots from there, especially when I’m an international artist in the lineup. Right?”.

With these thoughts in mind, I flew to my first international gigs in Switzerland in 2014, then to Hungary in 2015, then to Switzerland again in 2017, and soon to Greece. Events in different countries with big lineups of international artists; big clubs and festivals. Guess how many pictures of me are from there? The answer is zero. None. At least I’ve kept the posters, or else it was like there were none. Wonder how that’s possible?

See all my posts about the shows: posters, photos, mixes and other snippets from the tour

Well, the thing is, when organizers hire photographers, they do this for a very different reason. For the organizer, the main goal of the photos is to make people want to come to their next events. To do that, they usually try to show a good mood, people, vibe, location, deco, and all that that typically catches people’s eyes. And that’s not necessarily DJs at all.

For example, this is what one of such shots can look like:

Shankra Festival, Lostallo, Switzerland, 2017. The photo is cool, but not about me

I ended up having great gigs, but there’s not a single shot of me from there to use as my asset. Don’t be like me.

After realizing it was a complete failure, I’ve since made it a rule to hire photographers myself — not for the entire events, but specifically for my sets.

When you hire a photographer, you can explain to him what angles to shoot and from what not to; he certainly will not be late for your set; you probably won’t have to wait for the photos for weeks; the files will be in high resolution and thus they can be used even for posters, or anywhere. With this approach, I now have several hundred good pictures that I use for promotional needs, social media, podcast covers, and other uses.

I add the best shots in high resolution to a special page for promoters and press

Of course, I’m not the first to think of this. I remember in 2018 noticing that Boris Brejcha is touring the world, yet almost all the photos on his Instagram are signed by only a few photographers. In other words, Brejcha doesn’t rely on local photographers from the organizers (who, of course, are certainly present and take photos of Brejcha anyway), but he flies with his own, trusted guys.

Boris Brejcha on Instagram

Boris Brejcha in Moscow, 2018. Photo: Ruben Schmitz. The pictures like this “sell” well very

At the time, I thought it was a great idea and started doing the same thing. As an artist, I don’t gather stadiums of people like Brejcha, but even if there are only a hundred people on the dance floor, you can still ask the photographer to take at least a few close-up shots of the DJ — shots like that are useful and important too.

Me at a gig at Gorod Club, Moscow, 2018. Photo: Pavel Tzimisce. A nice, working shot even without the stadium of people

All in all, DJs, a word of advice: don’t rely on the luck of the draw, but hire photographers yourself. These investments are worth it.

Cubixx on marketing

Mon, 18 Jun 2018 18:02:25 +0100

Matthias Sperlich, also known as Dj Cubixx and the head of Iono Music, gave an interview to Mushroom Magazine talking about his love of the Psychedelic Trance and about the music industry.

I’d like to highlight one particular part:

“Reality is that people who work in the music industry need to be paid the work they do. Whether it’s as artists, promoters, label owners. Nobody can survive on fresh air. Marketing is a necessary tool to spread the word in this global scene – to keep people engaged and attract a new generation.

Of course, we do it for the love and the passion, and sacrifice a regular salary with the benefits of a holiday, sick pays and unions – we do it for the love and because we believe in the power of music so much. But if everyone rips our music for free, and people don’t pay for tickets to parties, then the reality is we can’t afford to eat and pay bills, let alone maintain our studios, so we’d eventually be forced to quit.”

Marketing is a necessary tool to spread the word in this global scene – to keep people engaged and attract a new generation.

This is essential to understand for all nowadays producers. I know many think that music speaks for itself and marketing is bullshit for commercial music only, but the reality is you as a producer have to do some efforts — quite a lot actually — if you want to be heard and pay bills for the work you do.

Live Q&A with John 00 Fleming and Tim Penner

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 18:44:09 +0100

Livestream highlights

The live stream’s banner

Two of my favourite artists, John 00 Fleming and Tim Penner, hosted a fantastic Q&A live stream yesterday that was full of insightful information and motivational speeches that every producer (myself included) should know. Seriously, go watch that video if you missed it live. It’s 2-hours long, but it’s worth it.

For those who don’t have two spare hours, I’ve written a quick summary to highlight some of the most important quotes from these two masters. And in such way, it’s also easier to come and read this again at any time.

On social media

I feel sorry for the next generation. Running a specialist label you definitely get to work with super talented producers and DJs, but they can’t make a career because they don’t know how to handle social media or they not doing it whatsoever. And it pains me because that person should be on main stages on the festivals and have a fruitful career, but they haven’t because they don’t understand social media and not doing what they should be doing.

Ace Ventura on social media

Music is used to be first, and if you were a good DJ, you’re good to go. Now it’s the other way around. If you good at social media, your career will take off regardless of what you got behind you, the music comes afterwards. Nail the social media, and then worry about the music afterwards. It pains me to say, but that seems to be the way it is today.

Nail social media, and then worry about the music afterwards

On organising music

I can only answer from me personally. I organise playlists as the tools that I need in hand. I never pre-plans set at all, I woke up to every single gig whether I playing an hour set or a 10-hour set, I never know what I’m going to play until I step up to the stage. But the way I’ve got my playlists it’s the musical tools that I know, let’s say ‘Progressive’ which is deep and melodic, you got ‘Progressive’ which is dark and driving, you got ‘Trance’ which is driving, ‘Psychedelic’ which is deep.

Organising music library

I must have to have about thirty different playlists, but the key to me is learning the tracks. It’s identifying by looking at the track exactly what it’s gonna do as soon as you start playing it.

Sometimes I secretly spy on other DJ’s playlists, when they come along playing before or after me and they got the USB connected to the players. It just pains me that some DJs will have just twelve tracks and nothing else on the USB. I couldn’t play like that!

When you first get tracks you don’t really know how good is gonna be until you play it in a live situation. It might sound quite driving at home but when you play it a club it’s not driving, so when I get back from the gig the first thing I do is spend an hour just going through memorising what I played and adding the extra notes.

What makes a good warm-up set

John 00 Fleming: The short and sweet answer is basically what you [Tim Penner] do. You got a respect the person that you warming-up for, you got to do your homework. And this is a big moment. What a lot of newbies think is their head is “Wow, this is my gig, this is my moment to shine, this is the moment my career going to take off!”, and they just want to play a headline set in that warm-up set. But it does the opposite, you just really upset the DJ you suppose to be opening for.

The importance of proper opening DJs

The point is you’ve got to get people in the room, you got to keep your levels down. You don’t want to walk in a club when everything is just screaming at you and you can’t go to the bar, get a drink and hang out with your mates.

You want to warm-up slowly, but then when everybody standing around the dancefloor that’s the magic moment — it’s knowing exactly when to drop a track that has a bit more energy or familiar track, and that’s when your levels come into play.

You got a respect the person that you warming-up for, you got to do your homework

Tim Penner: It is a really important job to be the most humble artist in that room: you’re setting the mood and you’re setting the vibe for the night. And the thing is that people are too smart now. They may not know that you are the best DJ in the world but they know that fit that motive perfectly for the night, and you set what that whole night is supposed to be about, people know this.

On productions skills

When new artists come into it, there is something that cool and hot at the time and that’s what they wanna make. So it takes time to become a skilled producer, and they’ll start to make that genre. So what you see now is all those artists starting to get better, they started to sound like that generic sound from four years ago. And when I listen to such music, I’m like “it’s not current anymore, it would’ve been four years ago”.

So the best turning point that also was for me is the hardest, is staying true to yourself but also looking ahead of the curve and seeing where the trends are going.

Keeping close to what you wanna make and expressing yourself through music while becoming more skilled as a producer, but not going by trends and trying to cut them off. Those artists that are cutting edge and trying different things, they are the one that stands out now.

On balancing production and life

This balancing production is a battle that every artist faces whether you touring or not, balancing life, in general, can be really hard. That could be one of the biggest hurdles for an artist to get over. You know, you have a family, a spouse, you have emergencies, and other things you want to do to fill your time with.

And wheater it’s touring or Game Of Thrones, there’s a balance between life and work. And you need to find that balance. Everybody faces this battle, and I think it’s a number one reason why people give up.

You need to find a balance, it’s a number one reason why people give up

On the mixdown

There are certain misconceptions about what makes a good track in the end. Mixdown and mastering, I think there are misconceptions about what that is, you know, a lot of artists will put sounds together and try to make a track and be like “well, we’ll fix it in the end”. But mixdown and mastering start at the very first sound that you put down, it’s very important to understand the physics of the sound and what you are trying to accomplish.

What is sound

One of the tricks with figuring out how to make music is how to make sounds sound full. A lot of people will just load their Ableton with a lot of sounds to make it sound full, when in fact the whole goal of making good-flowing music is to give each sound it’s own space to move.

So that is actually a backward concept where you make a sound and you need to let that sound work its magic in its own space. It’s not fighting with other sounds, and that’s the key.

On sharing the knowledge

A lot of people keep things in secret, and if anybody knows me that followed me over the years, I’m an open book. And I think being an open book, sharing your knowledge and helping people is the best way to strengthen our industry, as opposed to keeping it sheltered behind your own wall.

Advice series

We want to be around for as long as possible, that genre and our feeling, and the way to that is to embrace young artists, help them to get over the hurdles so they gonna be there decades down the road.

sharing your knowledge is the best way to strengthen our industry

Laidback Luke on music sales

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 14:55:39 +0100

Laidback Luke

This is brilliant. Today, Laidback Luke uploaded a new vlog episode where he is telling about ripping of tracks on SoundCloud. And by the end of the video, here is what he said about the music sales (watch at 11:55):

“So I started this vlog by telling you that I run my own record label, I even run my publishing company, so why would I promote this type of stuff [ripping off tracks on SoundCloud]? I need you to realise right now is that music is mainly promotion. The amount of money that is earned by selling your tracks is way less than back in the days. The most important thing is that your name gets spread, and because the money is in performing mostly, it’s always good to get your name out there.”

Music is mainly promotion. The most important thing is that your name gets spread.

This is exactly what I was written about in my “The truth about music sales” advice, and I’m happy that such a credible artist like Laidback Luke confirms it from his experience as well. By the way, all of his vlogs are amazing, make sure to check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.

Video from my talk @ Audio School, 05.12.2017

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 16:26:59 +0100

In December, I gave a talk at the Audio School in Moscow, where I shared my personal experience as a musician, and now it’s available on YouTube as well.

The video is in the Russian language, but you can still watch it with the subtitles:

00:00 Intro
03:56 Expectations and why they are important
08:02 Studio: how to avoid writer’s block
14:05 Release: what to do with music next
24:26 Audience: why artists need it
39:23 Routine: how to organize things

It was my first public performance where I had to say something, and I was terribly nervous. There is a lot to work on in the future: intonation, gaze, posture, and all that. Right now I look pretty dull.

However, this doesn’t make the information less valuable, so if you’re a beginner musician – definitely watch it.

I would be happy to give a talk at a conference, electronic music school, or any other music-educational event. Please get in touch if you would like to invite me as a speaker.

Ace Ventura on social media

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 11:20:46 +0100

Yoni Oshrat aka Ace Ventura

Ace Ventura gave an interview to a South African-based Psytrance portal Psymedia.co.za, and here’s what he said about social media:

Psymedia: You’re incredibly active on your social media channels. Is it an important role?
Ace Ventura: It’s not just important, its a must. With the overflow of so many new producers around, combined with the short attention span of this generation, making music, as good as it is – isn’t enough. If you want to actually be heard you must get yourself out there and let the public know about it.

Being active on social media is not just important, it’s a must.

It’s nice to see a confirmation of what I’ve been written before by such an experienced artist, it makes me think I’m on the right way. And it’s a lesson for upcoming producers around as well.

Read and watch also:

Futurephonic live with Chris Williams and Regan Tacon

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:04:21 +0100

Video summary and highlights

A few weeks ago, Futurephonic hosted a live Facebook video featuring two awesome guests: Chris Williams (Iboga Records, Noisily Festival) and Regan Tacon (Nano Records, Origin Festival).

That was a very insightful talk on career strategies for emerging artists. You probably know my commitment to education and learning, so I wish more people “behind the scenes” could give a talk like that.

The audio quality of the video wasn’t that great though, sometimes made it really difficult to watch. I’ve decided to write down some key points so I could get back to them at any time, perhaps some of you will find it useful too.

There we go.

On changes in the industry

The Internet is the biggest game-changer for the music industry, for the better. The distribution is much easier now, you can get music anywhere in a matter of minutes and anyone can access it.
Psytrance scene has also changed in the last decade, it spread out to more places across the globe. New subgenres come in and out, it’s an ever-changing process. Psytrance is a culture, so it will stay here for quite a while.
In the pre-Internet days, the music industry was labels-driven, they have control over everything. Despite such limitation, it was a higher threshold for the quality of music that has been released. Social media now liberated records labels ability to put music out, but the question is whether the quality of music across the board has risen? From the artist’s perspective, entrepreneurs and marketers now have amazing platforms to be creative.
We see now many artists experimenting with marketing, ads, formats of communication. We’re still learning, and there is no right or wrong way. This experimentation itself is what special about this time, it’s a fantastic time to live from the artist’s perspective, basically.

It’s a fantastic time to be an artist now.

On getting music out

Perfectionists find it really difficult to let it go. They keep polishing and polishing, and sometimes they polish it so much so they polish away the bits of what was good in the first place. Don’t sit on it for too long.
Finishing tracks is a part of the producer’s talent.
So many people doing the same thing, so much noise is out there. You have to come up with quality. Quality takes a lot longer, much longer than most people realise.
Most tracks out there is nowhere good enough quality as it should be. Artists need to be realistic about what they send to labels. Patience comes along the way.

On getting noticed

Spotify and YouTube channels are new platforms for discovering new artists.
From the new artist’s perspective who’s trying to get noticed, it’s all about presentation. If you have a Facebook page, make sure you have a high-quality design, branding of your product. Even if you put a Facebook video with your branding behind it, it’s very important that this branding is good—if not better—as the music itself. It’s vital.
The first impression matters even before anyone heard your music. It was the same even when the demos were on CDs — it’s like receiving a demo with a marker handwriting vs. CD with artwork, well-written letter, logo. Same applies to SoundCloud now.
Oldschool way of approaching by shaking people hand at the backstage still works the best.

Branding is vital. First Impressions last.

On being signed on a label vs. go independent

Labels work as a filter, taking care of the releases, artwork, promotion etc, allowing artists to focus more on music.
Ultimately, all successful artists need support, and labels are a massive help in that.

On albums and singles

Releasing singles is a great things—it gives a stable flow of music from artists to fans, no need to wait a year or two.
Each single is typically supposed to be a yet another dancefloor-killer which creates a lack of experiments, the cool B-sides. Back in the days, sometimes those B-sides become hits.
Albums give more freedom on that matter, you can have dancefloor-killers whilst also including a couple of out-of-the-box tracks.
Albums certainly add some extra weights, an extra level of value for the artists who are capable of creating those albums.

On commitment

Artists need to be committed to working hard. I don’t think people realise how hard some of those artists work. The guys who work the hardest are the one who gets the gigs, gets the money etc. because they push it all the time.
It’s a lifestyle, you have to be ready for this. And music is just one part of it, with social media it’s 50–50 these days.

I don’t think people realise how hard it is.

On festivals bookings

There are always some acts promoters keep in mind for the next-year festival lineup.
Once headliners are booked, promoters go over recommendations first and only then to submissions. Don’t send a festival submission in three days prior to the festival, it’s won’t work that way.
There are definitely some promoters who check and evaluate how many “likes” an artist has in order to make a booking decision.

On marketing

If you want to pay to promote your page, do it the right way using legit Facebook mechanisms, not via external “likes’ farms.
Always keep in mind country demographics when starting an ad campaign. For example, for sales-driven campaign always include countries like USA, Australia, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Denmark. However, for a streaming campaign, it’s worth also including Brazil, Mexico, and other countries that don’t usually purchase music, but stream a lot.
Men typically buy more than women, so don’t split demographic targeting 50–50, push it more towards men.
Upload Facebook videos.

We spend a fortune on Facebook marketing, to be honest.

On streaming and sales

Streaming isn’t bringing any money, let’s be real about it. It’s interaction with people, this is how people connect with the music.
Anyone who really buying music is DJs. You not gonna get money selling music as a Psytrance artist, although it’s true for other genres as well. There is just not enough people buying music across the world.
Beatport gives 60–70% of sales, another major amount is iTunes, and all the rest stores altogether are basically nothing. That’s how it is.
Linkfire.com is a good way of putting all the streaming and stores links at once and then get statistics of clicks.

On investment

A well-thought advertisement campaign could be a solid investment, eventually giving more gigs in return.
Rather than relying on a photographer that can or cannot shoot while you are playing, you can hire one to be sure you’ll get high-quality photos.
Some artists spend their entire fee hiring photo- and video artists to make a proper aftervideo from the event. Do it at least once in six months.

Invest in your branding.

“Should I post on every social media?”

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:23:07 +0100

As a music producer, should I post on every social media? Is it worth posting the same content on different social channels? Should I treat them differently? How frequently to post?

Mike L.

I used to think that as more social websites you use as better. Several years ago I would say “yes”, you need to be on Facebook, Twitter, Vk, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Telegram, Snapchat, Viber, YouTube, Vimeo, HearThis, ReverbNation, Google+... did I forget to mention anything?

Now, I’m saying this: you should be only on those social websites at which you are certain you can handle it at 100%. And by that, I mean constantly posting and working with the audience — not just once in three months when your new EP is out, but daily or at least weekly. Consistency is the key here.

Let’s say, could you post on Snapchat a few times a day, every day, without sacrificing your other duties? If the answer is “no”, you probably shouldn’t even start then. Remember that semi-alive public pages are even worse than their absence.

The importance of building a fan base

If you just started building your web presence in social media, I’d suggest starting off at least with Instagram and Facebook. The rest depends on your time, your audience demography, and your creativity.

If you still have any questions, feel free to drop a line in the comment box below.

Marketing by sharing

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 09:19:54 +0100

A technique of creating a captivating audience by sharing your knowledge and teaching other people about your domain

Jason Fried, the co-founder of Basecamp (formerly known as 37signals), is an advocate of marketing by sharing. Photo © Intercom

Hi Daniel. I’m studying sound engineering and I offer track mastering services. My question may seem strange, but still I’ll ask: how do I look for clients? Maybe you have some advice from a producer’s point of view and social media experience? As an artist yourself, how do you find mastering engineers? Is it worth investing in Facebook ads? Or Google ads? Or banners in themed communities?

Edward Hansen

I will allow myself to give more general advice because it seems that the situation is suitable for different professions and not just mastering engineers.

It is expensive and not always effective (and sometimes not very ethical) to cover the Internet with banners and chase people with tracking pixels to show them ads, especially when it comes to niche specialists: mastering engineers, wedding DJs, photographers, editors and other service professionals.

I’m confident there’s a better way to attract customers than direct advertising – to share knowledge and build an audience. Tell people what you do, how you do it, and why you do it this way and not that way. Not to sell to them (although you might, eventually), but to teach, show, and tell. And this way, you build trust and an audience.

Why you should run a blog

This point was so beautifully articulated and verbalized by Jason Fried in 2009, it couldn’t say better. Check out this short video and some thoughts from it:

“I think this [marketing by sharing] is especially relevant for small businesses and especially in the creative industry because it’s really expensive and difficult to break out: there is a ton of small design shops, there is a ton of video shops. And how do you get known, how do people find out who you are? Of course, you can hire a PR firm but it’s a waste of money and I wouldn’t do that, you can advertise somewhere but I don’t think it’ll work either because it’s hard to advertise design to kind of right people and it’s expensive. You can try some more traditional marketing ideas but I don’t think those generally work either.

What I think you should be doing is thinking about how can you teach people about your domain. If you are a web designer, for example, you can teach people about what it’s like to be a web designer, about CSS, HTML, what it’s like to land a client, you can talk about what it’s like to prepare a proposal or respond to an RFP. And these the things you can do on your website.

So, when you start sharing and start teaching other people, the great thing about it is all of a sudden you create an audience, which is a kind of a secret weapon when it comes to promoting your business. If you don’t have an audience, you have to constantly spend money to tell more and more people about your service, and after they buy something they go away and they don’t coming back until they want something else. But when you build an audience, when you generate useful content, people keep coming back to you every day for more information. Eventually, when they’re ready to sign up or they need a web designer or whatever you do, they will have you in mind because they were coming back to you every day. And that’s a really effective way of reaching people without spending a lot of money.

Or, let’s say, you are a writer. A freelance writer, or a journalist, or someone like that who needs to find more gigs and looking for more people to hire them. You should be talking about what it’s like to be a writer on your site. Most sites simply have a ‘Portfolio’, ‘About us’, and ‘Contact us’ page and that’s pretty much it, but you should have a section where you share drafts that were rejected, words that you left out. You should share one sentence you’re working on, share all different iterations and talk about why you left this one out, why you change these words, why you transpose these two words, what’s the difference between the final version comparing to the initial one. You need to share this process because people who read this are gonna go like: ‘This guy knows his shit. He cares enough about the words, he cares enough how words sound and structured to share with me the process he went through’. And that means a whole lot more than someone who simply shares a series of essays or articles they’ve written. That’s how you begin to build your audience.”

Jason Fried’s talk at The Chicago Convergence, 2009. Jason Fried is co-founder of Basecamp and co-author of Getting Real.

The best thing about this technique is that it can be used for any small business or service, even in the music industry. I highly suggest watching the full video above whether you are a songwriter, a mastering engineer, a film score producer, a journalist, a label owner, a visual artist, and so on.

What should I post on social media as a music producer

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 09:13:54 +0100

What should I post on social media? Do you have any ideas? I’m also trying to find someone who can help me with posts.

From the previous question of Timothy

Bedroom producers be like: “Ok so it’s Wednesday, let’s see what I can post on Facebook today”. Illustration by Alexander Nanitchkov

Before answering these questions, I’d like to make one thing clear first.

There is no one ultimate winning strategy for social media content that would work for everyone. Some people engage their audience by posting funny pictures, others prefer to make it strictly business.

Whatever way you choose, I suggest being genuine. I know words like “be yourself” sound cheesy, but once you accept where you currently are it’ll be much easier than pretending to be someone else. Music producers are different from corporate companies in a way that our communication is much more personal. Behind every alias and track is a real human being, and people feel that too.

Nevertheless, I know where this problem comes from. Look at any successful artist’s social feed and most of the time you’ll see either his upcoming gig announcement or photos and videos from the past gigs. But what if you don’t have twenty gigs a month yet? And obviously you can’t upload a new track every week either, so “I don’t know what to post on social” can be a real issue.

Well, here are some ideas for you. Keep in mind this is not an instruction but rather general categories of a content that you could possibly post as a bedroom producer:

Making-of’s	Show what you currently working on or tell how some of your previous works were made of. It always goes nicely, especially with the videos.
Studio	Demonstrate your workplace, gear, and tools you use. I find that this type of content attracts both listeners and producers.
Mentions	Did some credible DJ played your track? Have your track climbed at the top chart? Did you give an interview? Tell about it.
Share	Shout-outs to the other producers you enjoy. Share their music, give them credit, tell why you like that particular track or song.
Trivia	Some episodes of your daily life. Remember that something that seems ordinary to you as a producer might be interesting from the fan’s perspective.
News	Official announcement such as signing on a record label, release dates, new track’s preview; milestones in your career.
Hashtags	Share content on a specific day of the week with trendy hashtags, like #ThrowBackThursday or #FridayFunday.

But you can go further and create your own sort of series of content. For example, I host a monthly radio show, run a weekly advice blog, and plus occasionally share “Track of the week”, “Weekend readings” and other blogs. It helps to fill the gap between releases as so I always have some content to share. And people know that too so they have a reason to keep an eye on my updates.

Here are some of my posts just to give an example:

As for you trying to find someone who could post on your behalf, read the advice on artist’s manager if you haven’t yet because it’s a quite similar story. If you have no idea what to post on Facebook, how do you think someone else would know it unless you expect some generic phrases and producer’s memes? It might be a good idea to put social media management on someone’s else shoulders later, but I wouldn’t recommend doing that in the beginning because that’s how the learning curve goes, you have to get that experience from the first hand before hiring someone.

I also highly suggest checking out my experience of managing social media using Amplir. If you have the right tools and know how to use them, it turns out, managing social media isn’t that hard and time-consuming. In fact, you can have several active social accounts just by spending an hour a week if you work efficiently, so time is no excuse even for busiest persons.

John 00 Fleming Q&A talk

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 15:06:37 +0100

John 00 Fleming doing his first Facebook live stream

John 00 Fleming Q&A talk. John gave a nice almost 1,5 hours-long Q&A session prior to his set at Avalon and people asked a lot about the Trance scene which was quite interesting to listen. I like his advice for bedroom producers:

“The best advice is to keep it as a hobby and stay in love of it because a lot of people think they gonna hit ‘X-factor’, like a quick romantic story. It’s like you get a track, three months later you gonna be touring around the world, and that’s how the magic happens. But it is much more than that. It only happens for certain people. You’ll get angry, you’ll get stressed if you think that.

Sort your day-to-day life first, get your day-time job which pays your bills, and slowly invests some extra money in music. At some point, you’ll notice that your hobby will become more serious. But it takes a long time”.

Sort your day-to-day life first, get your day-time job which pays your bills, and slowly invests some extra money in music

Absolutely love it.

Telegram channels review

Fri, 30 Dec 2016 07:45:04 +0100

Opinion on Telegram channels from the marketing point of view, and comparison with Facebook pages in numbers

Typically, Facebook pages occupy the primary slot among social networks for public figures and brands, gathering all news as a central hub. I’ve been an active Facebook user since 2011, but the more I use it, the less I like it.

As a DJ and music producer, I’m always looking for new ways of improving communication with the audience so followers can get my latest releases, tours, blogs, and other news. This search led me to Telegram channels, and today I’d like to share what I’ve learned about it.

What is Telegram

If you haven’t heard anything about Telegram yet, let’s start off with a quick 101:

It’s a fast and free messaging app founded in 2013.
It has mobile and desktop clients and cloud-based seamless sync between them.
It’s ad-free and will remain forever free according to founders.
It has a lot of powerful features like bots, secret chats, groups, channels, and more.
By February 2016 (a year ago), it has 100,000,000 monthly active users and 350,000 new users sign up each day, delivering 15 billion messages daily.

I’ve been using Telegram as a messenger for quite some time now, but started my own channel just about a month ago.

Telegram me

What is a channel

Channels are a tool for broadcasting public messages to large audiences, similar to what you do on Twitter. A sort of blog within the messaging app.

A channel has as a public username so you can search it within the app or access via browser by the direct link, like telegram.me/dsokolovskiy_channel.

Basically, it looks like just one of the chats in the app. You can share text messages, images, links, and even audio and video playbacks using a built-in player.

By default, when you share a post, your followers will see a push notification. You can also send “silent” messages by clicking on the ring icon, this way they won’t receive notifications but rather just see an unread counter of your channel in the chats list, this is a sort of “gentle” notification. And since all broadcasts are organized by chats, you don’t need to compete for the users’ attention in their newsfeed using cat pictures — they will see your messages when they want to.

Here’s how a channel looks in the desktop app

One noticeable difference between Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media is a lack of interaction. There is literally no way people can “like” or comment on your posts, at least for now. The only thing that makes you sure you’re not writing into the empty void is the views counter on the right side of each of your post.

Is it a good thing? Let’s see.

My experience with channels in numbers

I have a very humble experience with Telegram channels as I’ve been using it only a month now, but here is what I’ve learned so far: per follower, Telegram posts reach a much larger audience than in any other social media.

I think since it’s a messaging app, people treat channels like one-on-one conversations and hence trust the authors. For example, if on Facebook people can “Like” your page just to show some support, here on Telegram people follow channels because they really want to read them.

Just to give some numbers to compare with, let’s take a look at my Facebook page which has about 14700 followers.

On Facebook, organic posts reach and engagement is quite suck

You’ll instantly notice these two quite nicely performed posts with 10k and 13k audience reach and probably think “huh, not bad!”. Well, the truth is such spikes happen very rarely, and besides, we know that Facebook artificially gives your native videos higher priority in the users’ newsfeed in order to compete with YouTube videos.

“Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video” by Hank Green

If you look at the other posts, they typically reach in between 1–3k, let’s count it as 2k on average. That is only about 13% of the total amount of followers.

Just think about it a for a moment: you spend a huge amount of time (and sometimes money, too) on getting a solid fanbase on Facebook, but once it’s time to actually speak to your audience — let’s say, you’re announcing a new album or a gig — only 13% on your followers will see your important announcement.

Now compare this to what I’ve experienced on Telegram:

Stats	Facebook page 14 700 followers	Telegram channel 74 followers
Average post reach	2k, or 13,6%	205, or 277%
Top-performed post reach	13k, or 88%	2k, or 2500%

Yes, that’s it. Having only 74 followers on the channel so far, my posts typically reach as twice as the audience I have. And my top-performed post so far viewed by more than 2000 people (once the counter reaches thousands, Telegram only shows short “2k” without specifics). Imagine if I’d had 14700 followers here like my Facebook page has :-)

How is that? Well, It seems that having no ability to “like” or comment motivates people to share your posts — this function is called forwarding here. And people actually do forward posts — to their friends, groups, and other public channels.

Even those posts which underperform still reach out to about 50~80% of your followers, which is equal to the most top-performed posts on Facebook.

Such a broad audience reach isn’t unique to my channel. For example, take a look at the Telegram’s own news channel: they have 78k followers while their typical post reaches about 250–400 thousand people. That’s huge.

Telegram News channel’s post reach is ×4-5 more people than the number of followers they have

Conclusion

Frankly, I have no idea what Telegram will be like in a few years. I also have no idea where to get the audience, I’m not even sure how most of these 74 followers I currently have found me in the first place.

What I know, though, is that Telegram is certainly worth trying.

On cover image: futuristic art from Telegram.org. All numbers are taken from the moment of December, 15.

***

Update on January 27, 2017

Last month I’ve been using Amplifr for social media analytics, and turns out I have 20% of the social traffic coming from Telegram. But taking into account that currently, my Telegram channel has 10—100 times fewer followers than my other social accounts, it actually means that Telegram has the highest click-rate per follower among all social networking services.

Social network traffic distribution on my website, data from Google Analytics on January 27, 2017

Release routes

Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:30:51 +0100

Pros and cons of self-release, record labels, and promo channels

I have a track that I think is great and I want to get it out there and played by DJs as soon as possible. Do I go the self-published route, set up a label, etc. and release on Bandcamp, or wherever, or send it to lables?

How do I find the right label, especially if none are releasing quite the same style as my track?

Hamish Strachan

Hamish, first things off I would like to write a comment on the “as soon as possible” part since you’ve mentioned such urgency.

A good promotion is usually a result of thoughtful and long-term planning. You can’t just export a track from the DAW and make it played by DJs overnight, unless you know these DJs in person, of course. Just to give you a sense of context: most record labels plan at least for 3-4 months ahead, some artists wait for release a year. We’ll get to it below.

Now we can talk about the possible release routes. There are many possible ways, but I prefer to classify them into three categories.

Self-release

A free download track from Coming Soon!!! got 322k plays, that’s almost ten times more than a regular upload. But for upcoming artists, it won’t work that way

If we think of the meaning of the words “music release” for a moment, basically, it’s a result of creative work available for distribution, and the point of this process is making your product accessible to the audience. And since the internet gives us an opportunity to directly reach the audience, you can self-release music.

Formally speaking, any kind of direct artist-to-fans distribution is a self-release. If you giveaway a track on SoundCloud, it’s a self-release. If you sell music on HearThis and Bandcamp or distribute via Ektoplazm, it’s a self-release, too:

Artist → Service → Fans

Keep in mind that setting up an own record label is not quite in this category. It’s like travelling from one city to another one on a plane or in a taxi: even if you’ll drive your own car instead, you still go the same route as it would be with a taxi, except that now you have to be the driver. Kind of awkward analogy, but I hope it makes sense.

Since you’re the boss, “as soon as possible” is actually possible with a self-release. You have full control over the process in all details. Want to giveaway a track on SoundCloud? Why not, takes one minute to upload. But would it grab DJs attention? Will DJs play your track in a clubs? Well, it depends.

If you already have a large fan base and you solidified your name on the scene, it might work. But if you just starting out, you might end up having 20 downloads with half being from your friends, and zero support from the DJs.

Coming Soon!!! often giveaway their tracks on SoundCloud, and it seems work quite well according to stats

Think from your audience’s perspective: how would they know about you in the first place? Even if your track is fantastic, how all those DJs will know about it if the only place it exists is your SoundCloud with a hundred followers, and the only person talking about your music is you? This is something to think about.

Release via record labels

Just the fact your track is out on Beatport doesn’t change anything. Only credible and trustworthy labels make a difference

Stores like Beatport and iTunes don’t accept music directly from the artists, they work with labels. But usually labels don’t submit music to the stores directly either, they do it via distributors. So the traditional chain looks like this:

Artist → A&R → Record label → Distributor → Stores → Fans

As you can see this is quite a complicated process, and partly this is the reason why at first it takes time to get music released, then it takes even more time to get back some royalties, and why those royalties are so small.

Thinking that setting up an own label would make things easier is a big mistake because operating as B2B you will have to deal with even more complicated bureaucracy, papers, accountants, reporting, and more.

Release on a label makes your track appear on the world’s largest stores, and many upcoming producers think this is a game-changer, a goal. “My track is out on Beatport!”, they proudly say.

Well, in reality, it’s not like that at all. The truth is no one cares. Stores are flooded with music and keep getting thousands of new arrivals weekly. So just the fact you get your music out on Beatport doesn’t really change anything, it’s overrated.

You may ask, “what’s the point of releasing on a label then?”. The answer is reputation.

A credible label has its own cult of followers: loyal fans that are willing to buy anything from this label, DJs that are striving for new material and keeping their eyes open on new releases. And when your music is out on one of such trustworthy labels, it grabs attention from the audience because they know this label already released a high-quality content in the past.

That’s the power of labels: instead of you talking about yourself, now other people talking about you: “Hey, take a listen to this. It has our quality-approved stamp”. And it gives more trust (assuming that such recommendation is coming from a credible label, of course). The hardest part is how to get on such a good label, but that’s another story.

Insights on sending a demo to a record label

Release via promo channels

YouTube channels are a new alternative way of music distribution

This is a relatively new way of releasing music, and it’s a sort of mixture of the previous two. On the one hand, it doesn’t have a traditional “Label → Distributor → Stores” scheme, but on the other hand, it still has a middle-man.

Promo channels are also called music promoters, broadcasters, and has other names, and basically, they are popular YouTube and SoundCloud profiles.

Don’t get it wrong, they are not just some individual enthusiasts who upload random stuff, although it started like that back in 2010 or so. Today, these channels are big companies with a solid income coming through the monetization programs.

Just to show what I mean:

EDM.com SoundCloud	723 thousands followers
Majestic Casual YouTube	3 million followers

In the underground music, these numbers are less, but you get the idea. Think about these channels as a radio broadcast of the 21st century. And no surprise they are so popular: in recent years, income in the music industry has shifted from sales to streaming, and we’ll see even larger changes in the coming future.

The process of pitching these channels is very similar to the way you dealing with record labels. At first, you have to make a research, then find the right contact of a person who curates the channel, then submit a demo, and so on.

Artist → Curator → Promo channel → Fans

The benefit of this release route is pure exposure due to a huge amount of views/listens those channels have.

Summary

Here some pros and cons of each approach:

Route	Pros	Cons
Self-release	Full control over the process As soon as possible More income from sales per track	Requires fan base No access to the world’s largest stores Low interest from DJs
Record labels	Traditional time-tested method Reputation coming from a credible name Promo pools with tastemakers	Complicated process No control over timing Low income from sales
Promo channels	Potentialy, the largest exposure Streaming will keep growing Can work with several channels, unless you have an exclusive deal	New, non-proved method Still has a middle-man No income at all

I can’t advise which way to go, but I hope this blog gave you some information to make a rational decision.

As for the second part of your question, let’s go over it next time.

Hiring professionals or DIY

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 08:32:14 +0100

Or why bad marketing is worse than its absence

Your ‘advice’ is completely out of context for the average bedroom producer. Not everyone has money to waste on douche bags calling themselves graphic designers. When in truth you can learn all these things & have thousands on dollars left in your pocket.

From the comment to the previous post by Dude

I totally understand your feelings and where it comes from. In general, I’m up for a “Do-It-Yourself” idea too. For example, in the “Artist manager” blog I advised being a manager for yourself rather than hire one. And I’m really glad you shared your opinion because I’m sure you are not alone in this thinking. I bet there are more producers think alike, and this is exactly why I’d like to discuss this topic deeper.

And before we’ll move forward, let’s clarify the meaning of the “average bedroom producer”. If you make music just to share it with the close people and don’t have any bigger ambitions, then you certainly no need extra investments. You probably don’t even need a mastering! And that’s totally fine as long as you enjoy it. However, if you do have ambitions and goals in music as a career, I suggest you consider the following.

Music, marketing, and management are the three main pillars that all together can help you reach success in the music business. It’s very important to understand that this mechanism works properly only when all pieces are aligned together and functioning on top of their performance.

If your music is not great, good marketing won’t help to get loyal followers

If you don’t know how to market your music, you may end up being known to a hundred people only

If you don’t have proper management, you’ll probably miss the big picture

Now, why I’m telling you all this stuff and how it’s connected to the “DIY vs pay to professionals” topic? Here comes the most crucial part: bad music, marketing, or management is worse than its absence.

If you release several tracks in a row with low-quality mastering, most likely you’ll get a reputation of an amateurish producer among both industry specialists like labels and other artists, and listeners. Labels won’t listen to your demos, DJs won’t play your tracks.

If a cover artwork of your release looks really cheap and homemade, people won’t even listen to this release in stores because the internet is mostly a visual media. And the same applies to your logo, press shots, website, and pretty much everything that reflects you as a music producer.

I advise treating to music as a business and invest in what that makes your product better. It might be quite expensive, but I believe a reputation worth much more than that.

Besides, hiring professionals for doing some certain things might be actually cheaper than learning how to do it yourself. Even if it’s “free” in terms of money, learning costs you time. And time is the most valuable resource in the Universe.

Imagine that your music career is a bridge, and music, marketing, and management are the building blocks its made of. If you don’t have enough of these building blocks, you won’t be able to build a long enough bridge to reach the other side. And that’s fine, you simply stay where you are. But if you build a bridge from bad or weak components, you’ll fall down in the middle of the path. And falling down from the bridge isn’t cool, you know. On cover image: Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Photo by Davide Ragusa.

What should be on a musician’s website

Wed, 11 May 2016 08:44:59 +0100

Hi Daniel, I have read your advice “A website vs. Facebook for musicians”, and I agree that it is good to have your own web space rather than solely rely on social media. I’m thinking to make a website now, but what should I put there? News, releases? Or just a logo and social buttons, like many other producers do? Any advice would be appreciated.

Jon

To answer your question, let’s see what kind of audience would visit your website, and what they will look for:

Audience	Interested in
Fans	Most likely, regular followers goes to musician website to check his upcoming gigs or radio show tracklistings. Avid fans might be interested in buying some merchandise and finding out more about the artist’s personality, such as biography, personal photos, interviews, and all kind of «behind the scenes».
Promoters	Before heading to the bookings contact section, party promoters might be interested to find “social proof” of your value: photos and videos from your previous events, quotes from famous artists, press mentions, past tour dates.
Press	Bloggers, reviewers, and other community enthusiasts can be interested to read your biography for some fact-checks; discography, interviews, news, as well as press pictures.
Producers and DJs	Your colleagues, fellow DJs, and producers might be curious to see insights of your studio work, gear, and equipment, and read some tips and advice.

Everything above is my guess, I can be wrong. Just like in any marketing strategy, there is no axioms or the only one right path. But it could be a good starting point for your experiments.

I advise to start small and make website bigger only upon needs. A smaller website is easier to launch and manage, it’s cheaper, and allows you to focus on what is really important, rather than spend a huge amount of resources for some messy and clunky website that eventually becomes abandoned. Keep it simple.

How to run successful web projects by Mirai Art Studio blog on Medium

I would also recommend starting a blog, as a part of your website or separately. It is great to have a place where you can share your thoughts and opinion. Blogging helps you get a stronger connection with the audience on a more personal level and boosts your own skills in many aspects.

10 reasons why you should run a blog

And at last but not least, I strongly recommend to add a signup form to your mailing list. Having contact emails of your fans and industry professionals is great not only for marketing communication but it also gives you a sort of backup. Twitter can go bankrupt and Facebook may block your profile, how will you speak to your audience? Right, via emails.

MailChimp is a great email marketing service. I’ll put here my signup form just to give an example