5 music career lessons I learned from gardening

5 music career lessons borrowed from gardening

I finally get gardening. I mean the appeal of it, not the green thumb part. Over the past few months I’ve been building and tending to my very first vegetable garden. Naturally, this made me think of… DIY music careers!

It’s one of the oldest cliches, the metaphor of life as a garden (or visa versa). But I’m about to go there. So take out your self-help trowels and dig with me a while.

We’re all wrestling with the big things — mortality, a lack of control, finding a sense of purpose — whether we reveal the signs of that struggle on the surface of our lives or keep them buried way deep down.

In that light, I think gardening is a game, a little model of existence, and an expression of how we try to shape, fight against, or accept the variables that are at play in our world. Plus, contestants get some tasty veggies for playing.

On a good day, a garden is a parcel of peace within the chaos, a place from which you can enjoy the literal fruits of your labor. On a bad day, it doesn’t feel so peaceful. Like life. And yes, of course, there’s the whole cycle from birth to death made evident in the microcosm of a garden as it moves through the seasons.

So obviously there are lots of parallels to draw between gardening and life. I figured we could take a look at a few as they pertain particularly to your musical life.

1. Start with good soil

I’ve got some sandy soil in my backyard, so I built a raised bed and filled it with a mixture of compost, peat, loam, and vermiculite. A good foundation for my garden. I didn’t want to have to fight with the native soil just to get the seeds to sprout. Ideally, you can prepare a similarly fertile place in your life from which your music career will grow.

What is your source of inspiration and strength in life? Is that source solid enough that you can keep drawing energy out of it for long stretches? If so, great. Time to plant! (Which could be the recording of a new album, launching a tour, etc.)

But if you’re struggling with anything serious — substance abuse, relationship problems, mental/emotional health issues — it’s often wise to postpone any “heavy lifting” (album launches with coordinated PR and radio campaigns, touring, etc) until those things have been addressed with the full attention they deserve.

Of course you can’t just put life on pause until you’ve got everything perfectly straightened out, so by all means, work towards your musical goals a little bit every single day. Just don’t sabotage your efforts by trying to grow the world’s juiciest tomato miles from a water source.

2. Make it a daily practice

As I said above, your music career, like gardening, should be a daily habit, even if you only spend 15 minutes a day on it. Watering the plants, turning the compost, weeding — there’s always something to do. Just like music: writing, recording, booking, promoting, practicing, etc.

And on a day when it rains (so I don’t have to water the garden), I’ll find something else gardening-related to do with that time, such as reading about various plant care practices, or thinning the lettuce. If a gig falls in your lap, what else can you do with those minutes or hours you’d have spent emailing venues?

3. Keep watering, even if you’re starting to lose faith

We recently posted an article called “7 signs your music grind is finally paying off,” and it points to something very common with musicians: the inability to tell when your efforts are leading you to the next step in your career.

In Maine, it stays cold into April, and then we have a cool May and June. So when it’s prime growing season in many other states, things are still a mystery up here. Are those seeds sprouting? Are they taking extra time for the roots to grow downwards before I’m going to see anything break through the soil?

The simple answer to these questions is: who knows; keep watering!

The answer isn’t quite as simple with your musical life, since it requires more than just water. But the point is the same: stick with it.

And this can often be true even in the face of data. For instance, you could arrange for a monthly residency at a local venue; the first month, all your fans and friends come out; the second month sees a slight decline in attendance; the third sees an even bigger decline; then on the fourth month you suddenly see numbers even higher than the first month, and it grows gradually from there.

Or you decide to post a new cover song video on YouTube every week. Analytics might be depressing to look at for the first six months — then suddenly you release a cover song video that strikes at the right time and people start sharing it. That drives your views for previous videos AND builds audience expectation for your upcoming videos too. What if you’d given up after 5 months?

So, even when you don’t see anything breaking through the soil, keep watering.

4. Be protective, and prune

Your music career — consisting of your music, your band members, your fans, and the partnerships you’ve forged with booking agents, publicists, radio promoters, managers, directors, designers, and other bands — it took time to build, and it should be guarded from squirrels… umm, I mean people (or other forces) that threaten its health.

You can’t just throw up some chicken wire and call it good, though. You’ve got to check the leaves for blight, look at the soil for signs of digging, and so forth. The good news is that the more regularly you’re involved with the management and direction of your music career, the more easily you’ll detect threats because you’ll have that hands-on familiarity with things.

Sometimes the garden is threatened from within and you need to do some pruning. The same can be true of a music career too. If a band member, or manager, or someone affiliated with your music just isn’t working for the health of the whole, it might be time to sever ties (though it’s always good to talk about this stuff first and see if a little extra water and sun can do the trick before you reach for the scissors).

5.  Acceptance! Get some.

I’m in my first year of gardening. There’s a learning curve. I don’t expect to have a giant harvest. Similarly, you should have realistic expectations when you’re starting off in music. You might not be able to quit your day job after the first twelve months, but so it goes.

Learn as much as you can, and then realize that even as you gain experience, you’re still subject to chance: foul weather, down spells, bugs, and blight. Or rather: the bad tour, the saxophone player quitting the group to go back to school, the time you played in Boston when the Red Sox were in the World Series, etc.

Aim high. Expect setbacks. Accept what you can, and keep making the music you need to make.

Are there any other music/garden parallels? Let me know in the comments below.

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Source: Musician Resources

Join CD Baby’s next Twitter Chat on Wednesday, July 8th — all about YouTube

CD Baby Twitter Chat: YouTube for Musicians

YouTube for musicians: a Twitter chat

Ready to chat with us again?

Join CD Baby on Wednesday, July 8th at 11am PST to talk about YouTube!

Do you have a YouTube channel? What is the best way you’ve found to gain more subscribers? What kind of budget do you have for your videos? Have you added lyric videos?

We’ll be there (@cdbaby) along with VP of Marketing Kevin Breuner (@kbreuner) and blog editor Chris Robley (@chrisrobley). Let us know how YouTube is impacting your career, share some of the challenges you’re facing, or ask questions of your peers.

If you missed our last chat, we talked about crowdfunding. Here are a few highlights from that conversation:

Join us Wednesday, July 8th and make sure you use #DIYmusician for each tweet! If it’s your first chat, you can take a look at some of our tweeting suggestions HERE.

Hope to talk to you Wednesday at 11 am PST (2pm EST)!

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Source: Musician Resources

How to post an update on Apple Connect (Apple Music’s new social network)

How to post updates on Apple Music through Apple ConnectConnecting with your fans on Apple Music

I just posted my first update on Apple Music using Apple Connect, the streaming service’s social networking feature, and I figured I’d share some step-by-step instructions.

Before you can use Apple Connect, you’ve got to:

* get your music onto Apple Music,

* claim your profile,

* download Apple Music onto your device, and

* familiarize yourself with this new streaming service.

From there, sharing content with your fans on Apple Music is pretty easy.

Here’s a quick tutorial with screenshots on how to post an update on Apple Music

1. Open Apple Music on your device, go to “Connect,” and click the compose icon (to the left of the magnifying glass search icon).

 

Apple Connect

 

2. Compose your update. If you want to add media (video, audio, etc.), click the + icon. If you manage multiple artist accounts, you can change the artist profile by clicking on the artist name in the “Post To” field.

Apple Connect

 

3. Add media (if you want).

 

How to share content on Apple Connect

 

4. Click “Post” to share your update with followers on Apple Music.

 

Apple Connect updates

 

5. Now, check to make sure it updated on your profile! Search for your artist profile on Apple Music (by clicking the magnifying glass icon).  Then click “Connect” (to the right of “All”).

 

Apple Music artist profile

 

6. Alright, it worked…

 

Apple Connect updates

—-

Over the next week or so, I’ll play around with Apple Connect some more. What can artists customize? What else can it do? I’ll let you know what I find out. And if you beat me to it, please leave a comment here with details. Thanks!

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Source: Musician Resources

A strolling tour of Apple Music

Apple MusicI’ve been looking forward to the interactive streaming aspect of Apple Music with excitement for a while now.

As for the radio (Beats 1) and social networking (Apple Connect) features of the new service? Well, I suppose you could say I’ve been a skeptic in advance, BUT… Apple Music is finally here, and I’m sold on ALL of it.

To trot out some jargon: Apple Music is robust, intuitive, and personal.

Walk with me, won’t you?

Apple Music: the new music streaming service at a glance

First, you’ll need to access Apple Music (which requires iOS 8.4 on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch). Here’s some instructions on how to download Apple Music onto your device.

Next, let’s take a peak around.

For You

This first menu let’s you customize your Apple Music experience according to your tastes.

Touch the corresponding bubbles for the genres you enjoy.

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 Then do the same for artists within those genres.

Apple Music: For You

Then Apple Music will start making some recommendations. Mine were dead on!

Apple Music: For You

New

Guess who’s on the front page of the NEW section? That’s right: Apple’s new best friend, Taylor Swift.

New music on Apple Music

And if you select a specific genre, you’ll see new music and playlists within that category.

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Hey look! There’s Thom Yorke.

Next up, Radio…

I took a listen to Beats 1, and actually enjoyed it. Dr. Dre’s “Let Me Ride” was playing when I first turned it on. Nepotism, sure. But that’s a fun song.

Beats 1 Radio

And yeah, that’s a Hall and Oates radio station… which demonstrates that Apple Music has connected with my listening history from iTunes Radio.

Connect

Here’s something that we’ll delve deeper into in a separate post (for artists), but Connect is the social networking feature on Apple Music that lets fans and musicians interact. Artists can share demos, photos, videos, etc. and fans can like, share, and comment on that content.

Apple Connect

My Music

So here’s a portion of my iTunes library, available for streaming within Apple Music. Nice. Convenient. I don’t have to go searching too far for favorite songs.

Apple Music

But… if I want to search for something NOT in my library, I can just hit that magnifying glass icon in the top right of all these screens and find nearly ANY artist or song in the iTunes Store.

Alright, that’s Apple Music at a glance. Check it out yourself and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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Source: Musician Resources