Pursehouse's Musings

If I was an indie artist & had £2,000 to spend, I would...

Caroline Bottomley

Radar Music Video

http://www.radarmusicvideos.com

http://www.twitter.com/RadarMusicVideo

I would use the money to emotionally enhance my music.

1) I would set up a house tour which would extend as far as I could fairly cheaply travel. Let’s say I’m going to do UK, Germany and Sweden, because I’ve got enough friends there to make it work.

I’d use my own email list, my Facebook group and my Twitter to ask if people for help in setting up a tour and ask would they like me to play (an acoustic) house party at their house? At least 10 of their friends would need to agree to buy a ticket for £10 plus bring a bottle of wine/beers. I’d send a free download in that first invite and a e-flyer mocked up - ‘your name here’ type stuff.

Lots of interesting marketing possibilities to insert here for promotion.

End result, get the email address from everyone who came, have them all upload their own gig videos to your YouTube (which you embed back into your Facebook) and ask everyone who uploads to send a link to their friends in turn (collect email addresses via YouTube & Facebook - give incentives for new people to sign up e.g. ‘want this to happen in your living room in September?’)

I’ve emotionally enhanced my music by associating it with real life me and my band. I have met fans and they have met me. I’ve associated my music with a party, friends, good times, openness, friendliness etc.

Cost: £800 food and travel budget for me and the band.

2) I would commission an excellent editor to cut together all the best bits from the house party videos into one killer video, put it on my YouTube and promote that to bits one month max after the end of the tour. Collect email addresses, get all the growing amount of people on my email list to promote it too on their facebook and twitter etc. I’d also start a ‘proper’ PR campaign at this point and start hitting some blogs with this video.

More emotional enhancement - all my new friends are in a great looking video that they have (half) made.

Cost:  £200 for the editor and master

3) I would commission a music video that is NOT a performance video. Something very smart and clever and possibly made by some brand new genius director in Taiwan (I’m using Radar of course to commission this J). I’d use it to do the same as point 2 - i.e. get friends to promote and hit on music and video blogs. The aim with this video is to move me up a league - I’m not just grassroots now, I’m aiming my music at a bigger group, including lots of people neither I nor my friends know.

Emotional enhancement - depends on what I’ve commissioned, but it will look fantastic, it’ll be one of those ‘have you seen that video’ kind of video and now many people will associate my music with whatever lovely things have been happening in that video.

Cost: £1,000

Tom Robinson

Presenter, BBC 6 Music

http://freshonthenet.co.uk

http://twitter.com/freshnet

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6musicintroducing

I would buy my band domain name for the next 10 years via http://www.mydomain.com (for the .com) and from http://www.123-reg.co.uk (for the .co.uk variant) and buy a ridiculously cheap two year web hosting package from http://www.bluehost.com

I would buy a CD printer and a stack of blank white CDs to print on, and get 2000 beautiful looking full colour card CD sleeves with my band name on and the track left blank so it can be overprinted. That way the same sleeves can be used regardless of what tracks you put on the CDs inside.

These should just be single card pockets rather than a digipack, which makes cost, storage, transportation and postage much more manageable. It’s also the optimum size for industry/media professionals you send it to (who receive vast quantities of CDs every day) while still looking attractive and showing that you mean business.

I would buy Photoshop Elements so as to create professional looking on-CD artwork, (which would include the tracklistings on the CD). I’d also buy a box of Avery stickers so that I could print professional-looking info stickers to slap on the sleeves. See http://freshonthenet.co.uk/?page_id=68

I would then turn out various different promo CDs as required

- to send to radio shows like Steve Lamacq, Huw Stephens, John Kennedy etc

- to send to promoters, agents etc to try and get gigs

- to give away to friends & members of other bands to spread the word

- to sell by mail order as physical equivalents of digital releases

- to sell at gigs

I would also buy a cheap PAYG mobile phone & sim card to receive calls for my “manager”. Either you or a friend can field these; many business people prefer not to deal with the artist direct.

And if I had a couple of hundred quid left at the end I would buy a cheap Edirol or Line 6 personal two-track recorder with a built-in mic and small monitor speaker - so that I could record jam sessions and song ideas INSTANTLY and capture the magic of the moment. I would carry it with me always. So many flashes of inspiration get lost in rehearsal rooms, or walking down the street, or waking up from a dream.

Actually, now I come to think about it, this ought to be the FIRST, not the LAST £200 that I’d spend. All the domain names and promo CDs in the world aren’t worth shit unless you have killer songs in the first place. And the key to writing killer songs is to write often and badly.

Only one in ten songs are ever any good, and we all have to finish writing the first 9 bits of crud to get to the 10th which is the gem. Bashing em down quickly onto a cheap voice recorder liberates you from the tyranny of high fidelity. It frees the spontaneous spirit of inspiration within you - which will in the end produce your greatest work.

Once you’ve written then next “Good Vibrations” or “Dry Your Eyes Mate” you won’t have to worry overmuch about promo - the world will beat a path to your MySpace page.

Andrew Dubber

New Music Strategies

http://newmusicstrategies.com/

http://www.twitter.com/dubber

What you’d spend the money on would be whatever you think will take you one step closer to your goal or would remove an obstacle: fix the van, buy a PA, finish the album, pay for singing lessons, throw a launch party, get a banner made, hire a lawyer, get advice towards a business plan, get a few Flip cameras, graphic design, a bunch of students to help with online marketing, a PR campaign - whatever. The answer should pretty much be different for whoever is asking the question.

How I’d spend it? Probably groceries. Never know where your next batch of good food is coming from when you’re an independent artist. :)

Amy Woodhouse

Creative Cultures

http://www.creativecultures.biz

http://www.twitter.com/ccultures

If I was a wise wise indie band and the thought that I had £2000 had not gone to my head, and had therefore spent it all on things I didn’t need such as spangly new guitars and tight trousers, I would do the following;

I would record a vaguely professional sounding set of songs (not spending an effing fortune mind because there is quality and then quality that you can’t actually hear unless you are a hybrid of a bat and an Alsatian).

I would keep some proportion of the money for travel costs and book a tour outside of my local area (I think too many bands totally saturate their home town by playing gigs every week and don’t ever branch out to new areas).

I’d invest a good deal of time in my social networks building networks of real friends and networking amongst people who might be able to give me gigs in my local area and outside (this may not need money throwing at it, as it can be done for free, but if my MySpace looked like a 5yr old made it and I had no HTML skills whatsoever I would spend some money getting a designer to work up a look and logo that defined the band)

I would also spend a small amount on getting some generic flyers made that I could leave around at gigs or give to people, that have essential info on such as MySpace address and contact info. It may seem a bit cheesy, but how often have you been at a gig and haven’t caught the band’s name due to the lead singer’s drunken mumbling, thought they were ace but have never seen or heard them again because you have no clue who the hell they are? Well it’s happened to me a lot and bands could do a lot worse than making sure that people know for definite who they are.

And slightly further down the line, if you are creating a buzz and you’ve got a small tour lined up and/or  are recording a few songs then investing in some PR can help to alert the industry to a new band on the scene with potential. Don’t go mad with this, you aren’t Pete Doherty just yet, but a few well placed calls and emails may help to secure you some column space both online and offline – and the power of the media shouldn’t be underestimated. There are a lot of small music PR companies who can help you with this without breaking the bank.

The main point of what I’m trying to say is, it may be boring but it’s important to get the groundwork right. Making sure your songs sound good and that you’ve got the cash to travel, basic branding sorted and a way to get your music to people who need to hear it count for a lot. The extra stuff, like the flash gear, the videos, the expensive printed CDs are genuinely not necessary; if your band is good enough then you won’t need it.

A&R Gentleman

If I was in a band I’d…

1)      Probably spend a bit of money on buying music and getting as many influences and ideas as possible, although no with Spotify this is an expense saved.

2)      Buy any essential gear

3)      Find a really local engineer/producer and spend a little bit of money working on a couple of tunes. If they’re on the same page as you and you’re happy with the sound and direction they’re taking you in, then spend some more money and do some more tracks. If not, find someone else