Bob Baker's The Buzz Factor

Would you like to be more productive with all the things on your music career to-do list? Then check out The Organized Musician post over at The Secret Music Life of Kat blog.



She writes ...

As an independent artist, you wear many different hats. Those hats can be divided into two main arenas: the creative arena and the business arena.

The creative arena, of course, includes roles such as musician, singer, entertainer, songwriter and producer. Kat breaks down the much longer business arena into three subcategories: strictly business, promotion and management roles.

Then she encourages artists to divide and conquer these areas:

While you need to be the bottom line decision maker and aware of everything that affects your career, many of these roles can and should be delegated to others [such as other band members, family members, friends and fans].

The key is to outline all the responsibilities you are delegating as well as the results that you expect. If you treat your career professionally, so will others.

It's good advice and a helpful way to tackle all that needs to be done to build your music buzz.

A Word of Caution ...

When it comes to marketing, don't lock yourself into the "business" aspect of it too tightly. Too many musicians make the mistake of thinking of promotion and sales as drudgery work. It shouldn't be that at all!

Derek Sivers (of CD Baby) said it best during his recent talks at the ECMA conference in Nova Scotia: Marketing should be a natural extension of the creative music-making process.

You're excited about the music you make (or at least you should be). Hopefully, you also realize how your music positively affects your fans. Sharing it, talking about it, and spreading the word should come easily.

Stop thinking about marketing as something that big business does, and start looking at it as something that people do: talking about and sharing cool new music.

It's not a crime to list marketing as an activity separate from writing and recording songs. But it would be a big mistake to categorize marketing as something that's not every bit as "creative."

-Bob