And I don’t mean musicians on tour – it’s more about people changing their location, moving between cities and even countries. While it’s generally obvious how to prepare for a long travel if you are a freelance writer or run a small online business (after a brief check I’ve found that there is a myriad of great resources for that, e.g. Location Independent or Free Pursuits), musicians might need access to not so evident things – like a recording studio.

And here I remembered the site that had been pitched to me few months ago, called Open Studio. Sounds like an appropriate deal, so let’s take a look at it.

Connecting Musicians And Rehearsal Spaces

Image credit: aileenrobot on Flickr

Rand Rognlien, Chief Musician’s Advocate at Music Nomad noticed that twenty percent of musicians utilizing the encyclopedic information at his site were looking for studio space. Inquiries were said to be from touring professionals and garage bands alike.

“We have over 250 studios listed on our site.” remarked Rognlien. “And we’ve researched every one to make sure it’s a legitimate business. Many studios are listed on sites like craigslist, but we’re the only site that goes the extra step to insure our musicians are dealing with reputable companies.”

And so he launched Open Studio, “allowing to hourly and monthly rehearsal studios to list their available rooms, and musicians to find available studios in their area using their zip code or city.”

If you’re a space owner, you can set up a profile of your studio and any room you have available. You can set up additional room profiles, and when a room becomes available, visit your profile page, check “Available,” and anyone coming to the site can now see your listing.

Promised to be added soon is a waiting list of musicians in any area that are looking for available monthly rooms.

If you are a musician, just enter your location and sort available studios by distance.

What might be not so attractive for bands and musicians at this point is that the site lacks what it is supposed to have – a large list of available studios (there are 25 listed when this post is being written). It might be due to very recent launch of the start-up (it’s still in the beta mode), so if you own a studio – be sure to add it to the directory.

What Open Studio also needs to become a true creative nomad’s assistant is support of more countries, though I’m not sure if this exists in the founders’ plans.

But if you need a rehearsal space in the US or own one – check out the site and let me know your thoughts.

Do you know any other services created specifically for musicians living a life of a traveler? Any tips? Share them in the comments!

For part one of the series, go here.

Band 1

Image credit: Nirazilla on Flickr

The first band put together their own show and instead of teaming up with another band, they hired a small group of (very attractive) women dancers to perform on the stage as the opening act. It was announced (before and during) the show that these women and the band would be hanging out with the audience ‘after’ the show at a nearby hotel lobby. People enjoyed the show and the activities that followed later. The key piece of success for the band was that they heavily promoted the event as ‘special’ and promoted the dancers (including embedded dancer videos on the band’s and club’s website) in as many places as possible. They worked very hard to promote the uniqueness of this show and told people very clearly how ‘this show’ was better and more special than previous shows. It didn’t take long for the promotion to go viral in the area. The final result: The club was packed!

During the opening song and the band’s final song the dancers came out and danced on stage, then moved into the crowd for a while and danced there too. The dancers were smart when they had the idea to integrate their act with the bands act on and off stage. They made real connections with the crowd as they mingled with them at the show and also afterwards. Both the band and the dancers did something really good for themselves. Instead of just putting on a good show and making the audience have a good time, they put a strong desire in the minds of many people there to come see them again and again.

This band did similar shows with these (and other) dancers as well as comedians and other acts (both musical and non musical) to keep their shows different from each other so that people would not only get off their butts to come to see the band for the first time, but also for a second, third, fourth, fifth and more times.

Band 2

I recently saw a second band play in Chicago. Their show also had other ‘acts’ that were not bands, including a pair of very attractive fire eating women who the crowd went absolutely crazy for. The only problem was there were only about 100 people in the venue to see the show (the club can hold up to 1,300 people).

The band knew the audience would love the show, but they failed to promote it well and differently than how they promoted their past shows. So at the end of the night they had 100 people who might come back to see them again. Had they promoted the event as the first band did, they would have had several hundred people coming back to see them again.

Had the show been promoted and organized more similarly to the way the first band had done, they would have several hundred people coming back to see them again at their next shows which would then almost be a guaranteed success (at least on the local level)…

It’s very important that your shows are unique from each other and not necessarily unique from what other bands do. In addition, the most crucial lesson to be learned is all of your ‘promotion’ needs to highlight each of your shows as unique, different and special events. It’s not enough for your shows to actually be unique, you need to always communicate that uniqueness in all of your heavy promotion.

What about your band? Well, I’m not suggesting to simply copy what the other bands did above. I’m suggesting for you to think a lot about what your band can do to make your gigs more unique and special for your fans. So talk with your band mates and brainstorm new ideas that may work for you. To learn more ideas, you can download this free eBook about getting more people to come to your band’s future gigs.

Tom Hess is a professional musician, recording artist and mentors other musicians from around the world to expand or start a music career.

If your band plays 25 gigs this year, how many of your friends/fans will come to see more than 4 of these? A very small percentage. Why?

It’s (probably) not you, it’s them. Let’s find out why and what you can do about it.

When you ask your friends/fans to come to your next live show and see you play, what are you really asking them to do? Are you asking them to watch and listen to you perform your cool songs? No.

In reality, you are really asking people to travel all the way to some dirty club where they need to pay to get in the door. Then they will find themselves surrounded by intoxicated people who scream in one’s ears because the music is too loud to talk, pay for overpriced drinks (and bad food), stand (or sit if they can find a chair) through an opening band they likely have little or no interest in, then wait again an additional 15 minutes as the stage changes from one band to the next, then finally they get to stand through 90 minutes of your band’s cool songs in a room that is booming with muddy bass frequencies because the sound man does not know how to properly mix bands in a room that was never acoustically designed to have loud music played in. After the show is over they leave the club and drive home with their ears ringing and a headache.

So if that’s what you ask them to do the first time, they come out to see you play… What are you asking them to do the second time? … And the third time? The same thing of course.

Photo credit: zestrokes.tumblr.com

Compare that with going to see a movie. You go to the nearest theater, you buy a ticket, you ‘sit’ through 5 minutes of previews, then you watch the movie. Afterwards you are home in maybe 15 minutes.

Or compare going to see your band’s live show with staying at home and watching TV, listening to music, surfing the internet, or a long list of other pleasurable, easy and convenient things people can do.

The point is this: people have easier, and more convenient alternatives to have fun next weekend besides coming to see you (or any other band) play live.

As you can see, musicians fight an uphill battle to fill the venues we are performing at. We have a lot of work to do in order to get people off their butts to see your band’s next live show.

Your friends and fans really need to know if it’s going to be worth all the hassle described above before coming out again to see basically the same show a second, or third, or fourth time.

You first need to create a better and more unique experience for your fans from one show to the next. Some bands change the songs they play from show to show. Changing the set list does help a little bit, but you need to do more than that to really change what your fans will expect to experience.

Some bands try to be uniquely different from other bands. You don’t need to be different from other bands, you need to be a good band that puts on gigs which are often unique from each other! People need new reasons to come back to see you again and again. Download this free eBook about getting more people to come to your band’s future gigs.

Think about what your band can do to make your shows unique from each other. Then, once you have ideas in place that will make your next show more special for your audience, you need to clearly and strongly communicate this to people.

Read part two of “How To Get More People To Come To Your Live Shows” here tomorrow.

Tom Hess is a professional musician, recording artist and mentors other musicians from around the world to expand or start a music career.

When asked by Joe Matera, how important the musician thinks is touring these days with the way the whole internet and downloading issue has affected the industry in general, Nick said:

Photo credit: Rudy De Doncker

Selective touring is the name of the game now so it is not about how much touring but about when you do tours, to do more thorough tours.

Do every country and every big city and do them as well as you can so you don’t have to keep on going through them as often. The cost of touring has gone up immensely because of fuel costs and because everyone has increased their fees for everything from airlines to backline companies.

So it is much more expensive to tour today. And for us, because Tim has a family now and Phil is married, we don’t want to go out longer than we need to. On the flipside though, touring has been how we’ve been able to do this band since the early days, by touring as hard as we have in the past. It is what we have to do to make our living from this.

My point is that concerts are as important to musicinas as ever (even more than ever), but the approach is becoming different – especially for the relatevely smaller bands.

You can read the original interview at this location.

Chairman and CEO of Metal Blade Records, Brian Slagel comments:

We are very excited about the launch of our own TV channel, Metal Blade TV! We are going to bring you not only content from Metal Blade artists, but from the entire world of Heavy Metal. We want to take you behind the scenes and see all the bands in a different way. Also there will be a lot of rare live video clips too! We really hope you enjoy this new venture from Metal Blade Records!

We Are The Fallen video shoot

What I also love about this idea is how Metal Blade looks to showcase metal from all over the scene on Metal Blade TV. From being one of the leading independent metal record labels, this shows a love for the game, which if you think about it, we are all fans of the game at heart.

Another fine example that comes to mind is Trustkill Records, and their involvement in the music scene running the website KillerTours.com. Such an upbeat and stylish website where you can find all of the latest tours, embed widgets of your favorite band’s upcoming shows, and there are also in depth CD reviews and interviews. You can just tell that the Trustkill guys have a love for the music scene as a whole, and will do anything to help spread the word. Killer Tours also sponsors tours, run ticket giveaways, and they help increases awareness for all involved.

Simply put, Killer Tours is the go-to-place to find all of your metal, hardcore, and punk shows. You’ll never be lost in the dark wondering when your favorite show is coming around. I mean, man, I’m always looking around for shows in the area, and a lot of the time you never know they are even there! Killer Tours is the perfect place to find the shows that you want to see. It’s an easy site to navigate through, and you can adjust the search engine to your local area, or to all around the globe. Seriously, go there right now, make a profile, and join in on all of the action. In the end, there’s nothing like a killer tour!

There are a few things that will be different this year. First, there are no single-day passes; you must purchase the full 3-day pass, which costs a hefty $269 plus fees. Second, onsite camping is available by renting out 300-square feet areas where you can also park your car.

A few lesser-known acts that are worth mentioning

Jonsi

Jets Overhead: This Canadian indie rock band has yet to receive the commercial success it deserves. Their first album was released as a “by donation” download over a year before Radiohead applied a similar strategy to “In Rainbows”.

Portugal. The Man: The band has slowly been gaining popularity, all while continuing their experimental yet pleasant indie rock sound.

Jónsi: He is the lead singer of acclaimed Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, which has been on hiatus since earlier this year. His first solo album is to be released this April.

De La Soul: This hip-hop group sang in “Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz, and are also featured in “Plastic Beach”, the latest upcoming Gorillaz album.

Sia: Lovely-voiced Australian pop singer Sia has sang for Zero 7 but has also released three solo albums, with a fourth to be released this April.

A few of several artists (and reunions) that we would have liked to see in the lineup

Lady Gaga: Let’s face it, she’s one of the hottest artists in pop culture today, and certainly would have been able to attract a myriad of concertgoers on her own.

System of a Down: Although it could be too soon for a collective return to the stage, Coachella would be the ideal event for a reunion of the Californian band.

Lady Gaga. Photo credit: »grahamblackall on Flickr

Dr. Dre: With an upcoming (and allegedly) final album due to be released this year or the next, Coachella could have been a natural event at which Dr. Dre to perform, also due to Coachella’s close proximity (100 miles or so) from his hometown of Compton.

Pretty Girls Make Graves: Also would require a reunion, this unique yet underrated post-punk revival band played at Coachella in 2004. They broke up in 2007.

Interpol: New York based indie rock band Interpol have reported working on a new album, and although they are set to tour with U2 this summer, Coachella 2010 could have been a good starting place beforehand.

Yes, it will be crowded. As one person worryingly wrote on the event’s message board about how having a large camping site with cars and alcohol could prove to be dangerous if someone were to decide (rather stupidly) to drive their car on the camp grounds after consuming too much alcohol.

But Coachella is bound to be an entertaining weekend to say the least. It certainly is a bit of a financial stretch for those who are on a tight budget and/or don’t live within a 60-mile or so radius (and thus cannot drive back home at the end of each night), but this festival has brought together a myriad of talented artists and is one of the few times and places that one will be able to see supergroups Them Crooked Vultures (John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, Dave Grohl from Nirvana and Foo Fighters, Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age), Atoms for Peace with Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Joey Waronker (R.E.M., Smashing Pumkpins); as well as The Dead Weather which includes Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs), Alison Mosshart (The Kills), Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age), all of those in the same weekend!

So think twice before dismissing attending this unique and promising musical activity.

Palais des Festivals

This year’s event saw a decline in the number of attendees (13% less compared to 2009), even despite the fact that MidemNet was free. Many blame the economic climate, which is pretty fair. It’s notable, as the event was all about the money (music monetization, to be specific).

I spent the first day of MidemNet at panels. Basically, this was the only day I spent at MIDEM 2010 panels…

Amanda Palmer and The Young Punx’ Hal Ritson started up the conference program with a bang. Amanda sang few verses from Radiohead’s “Creep” with her ukulele, and I had a chance to film the full version of the cover performed in the Palasis’ hall in the evening of the same day, but let’s get back to it later.

Amanda told a story of building a strong relationship with her fans throughout the years, and Hal revealed the three principles that he thinks you have to do to success in music today (paraphrased):

1. Make people hear your music.
2. Establish an emotional contact with your listeners.
3. Find revenue streams.

Rock Band: The Beatles booth

Amanda Palmer found out that it’s much more effective to put all her efforts into many projects, instead of just one (e.g. sitting in the studio for a year and then touring for two years ain’t too good). That’s not all though. “Everyone knows tools like Facebook and Twitter, but the trick is to use them with passion,” she said.

The same day I attended panels with Pharrell Williams and Pete Wentz (unfortunately both were pretty boring), MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, Kodak’s Jeffrey Hayzlett (surprisingly, he sounded more interesting than most representatives of the actual music business at the conference), and many other industry experts.

I seriously recommend you checking out this survey conducted by The Music Matters and Synovate and presented at MIDEM by Jasper Donat. Interesting facts.

Probably everyone’s main buzz word of this MIDEM was MusicDNA, the technology aimed to replace MP3s. It’s been developed by Dagfinn Bach, who worked on the world’s first MP3 player in 1993, and has the backing of Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Germany. He’s been credited as the inventor of the MP3 itself.

MusicDNA is billed as an “enhanced, unified media format” that enables music to be tagged with lots of metadata. Attributes such as tempo, instrumentation, mood and ‘colour’ can be added, which has consequences for the way people search for music, create playlists and discover similar material. Find more at a Billboard report.

MidemNet Lab

Not having invites to NRJ Awards, held on the Saturday evening, we also stupidly missed a fabulous Jay Z party at Baoli (oh Cannes..)

Sunday was literally full of meetings, and ended with a MOG party at Morrison’s. As I said, I missed all the panels on Monday and Tuesday, aside from several MidemNet Lab showcases. They were held in Palais’ Hall 01, and I found the place sort of confusing (it was small and everyone had to stand or sit on the floor). I will cover some of the start-ups from MidemNet Lab in separate posts.

The exhibition areas seemed pretty calm this year, we could find a free table anywhere most of the time (this was only my second MIDEM, but veterans told me it used to be much, much more crowded).

Rock Band had two booths with the latest editions of the game, and overall there were quite a few interesting companies presenting their services / products. I loved a demonstration of Vinylrecorder T-560. Would be HAPPY to be able to burn vinyls at home this way:

That’s it for the promised brief roundup, but that’s not all for this year’s MIDEM. The event was rich on news and events, and I will keep providing you with the best of info brought from there.

PS: As promised, here’s a video of Amanda Palmer performing Radiohead’s classic “Creep” with her ukulele in front of Palais des Festivals’ Auditorium Debussy for MIDEM 2010 attendees. Filmed this on January 23rd, leaving the last panel of that date. The quality is crap, but hope you’ll still feel the vibe:

Top Acts of the Decade (# of shows/millions of dollars grossed — taken from Billboard’s website):

60s

• THE ROLLING STONES: 264/$869
• NEIL DIAMOND: 288/$264
• CHER: 383/$257
• PAUL MCCARTNEY: 106/$238
• ROD STEWART: 281/$233
• TINA TURNER: 168/$212

70s

• ELTON JOHN: 541/$603
• BILLY JOEL: 241/$418
• BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: 403/$688
• THE EAGLES: 240/$347
• AEROSMITH: 320/$292
• JIMMY BUFFETT: 196/$215

80s

• U2: 288/$844
• MADONNA: 248/$801
• BON JOVI: 249/$419
• THE POLICE: 144/$361
• METALLICA: 187/$227

90s

• CELINE DION: 597/$536
• DAVE MATTHEWS BAND: 547/$505
• TIM MCGRAW: 388/$303
• KENNY CHESNEY: 622/$477
• TOBY KEITH: 542/$271
• TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA: 728/$203

2000s

• BRITNEY SPEARS: 255/$216
• RASCAL FLATTS: 401/$222

Image credit: kellysweetrewards on Flickr

Now, music videos came into their own in the early 80s with the advent of MTV. Prior to MTV music videos existed as an art form largely bereft of any large commercial impact, but MTV brought the medium to a large audience. Any band that broke through after the launch of MTV owed part of their success to the commercial opportunities that the new medium brought. So taking another look at that list, we can see that there were six acts from the 60s, 70s and 90s, five from the 80s, and two from the 2000s. So the 90s have the same representation on the list as the 60s and 70s, and the 80s are almost identical; music videos must not have a detrimental effect on the fan base.

The next thing to look at is price per show. Every single one of the acts from the 90s and 2000s pulled in an average of less than one million per show, while three of the five acts from the 80s averaged over two million a show and the rest topped a million. Then something interesting happens when we get to the data from the 60s and 70s. In the 70s one of the acts averaged less than a million per show, while in the 60s a grand total of three acts averaged less than a million per show.

Allow me to translate all of this for you: you’re not going to make very much money in touring. Not when you’re first starting out. The peak money in touring is normally found about 20 years after breakout success, regardless of the era. It’s entirely possible to fill seats like Led Zeppelin and the legends of old. The music industry is one big pyramid scheme that screws over those at the bottom, where success is reserved for those that survive. So don’t get discouraged if you don’t find success right away, or even after a year or two of touring. It took bands like the Police four years to even put out a record. Survive, and the peanuts you’re living on turn into more kingly fare, but it’s up to you and your own personal quest to figure out how.

Ben Histand is a fourth-year Business student with an interest in finding out how pop culture works, and has spent entirely too much time finding out how Marvin Gaye is the same as Led Zeppelin, and why Led Zeppelin sold a whole lot more albums.

Check out few interesting to Dotted Music comments from Whitechapel guitarist Alex Wade below. The full interview is going to be posted on Ultimate Guitar pretty soon, but you read it first, as usual!

Alex Wade

The band has toured heavily in its relatively short lifespan, how important is touring these days for a band such as Whitechapel despite all the doom and gloom within the industry?

It is absolutely crucial for a band. And for us that is the only way we can make money. We do get a royalty check here and there, but our royalties really goes back into paying off all of the stuff we have to acquire as a band. So the only way we can really make any money and be able to do it as a career is to tour. If you are a young band looking to tour and stuff like that, and you are really wanting to make this your career and make this your lifestyle, I am not telling you to quit your job or quit your school and head out on the road, but it definitely takes 110% and all of your effort and everything like. You have to put everything you are into the band and hopefully from all of that, you’ll reap the rewards.

It is well known that Whitechapel adhere to a clean living, straight-edge lifestyle?

Yes but that is just me. I am the only band member that is straight edge. Honestly, the other guys really don’t party as hard as people probably think they do. I mean they do enjoy a couple brews now and then, but nobody has any problems with drugs or alcohol or anything like that. I am very thankful to be in a band like this and living the lifestyle that I do. I do it for myself so I don’t really care what other people do. I have a lot of friends that drink and I have more non-straight edge friends than I do straight-edge friends. And it definitely helps not having to worry about my band members being sloshed all the time and stuff like that.

Do you find it hard to maintain that kind of lifestyle within an industry that is known for excesses of every conceivable kind?

No, not really. A lot of people tend to say to me, “man I don’t how you do it being in a metal band“. But honestly my whole life I’ve grown up being pretty clean as I’ve never really drank or done drugs or stuff like that so for me, it is a pretty easy lifestyle.

I should be doing a separate post on this topic soon. My point is that living a stereotyped sex, drugs and rock n’ roll lifestyle is not as affordable nowadays as it used to be (I don’t touch the moral aspects here). You are a CEO of yourself and your band, and you have to work hard to push your business (music). I doubt you know a lot of successful companies’ CEOs getting drunk each evening or sniffing coke from whores here and there (OK, maybe CEOs just don’t have the same opportunities as rock stars, but you got the point).

A brief tutorial on the site shows that the tool allows bands to automatically plan tours using a tour router (built on Google Maps API). This takes the hassle out of planning and booking, which I believe is true. The product is designed “to assist new artists who lack management experience to help move their careers from the garage to the arena.” You should note, however, that it can only be used for planning gigs across North America.

TourSavant.com logo

One of TourSavant.com‘s pleasant advantages is that it welcomes bands to contact them from the road for assistance with issues they may face. “I learned a lot about what these bands need while keeping the band Cactus’s going on the road for over six months… my passion for new bands led me to think about how to help others,” says music industry veteran Paul Rogers, who formed the site and business in late 2008. With his aid, Cactus’s moved from the garage to an industry showcase at the famous El Mocombo Theatre in six months time.

The site is a membership-based community. Features include GIGTONIGHT, a free service that sends a text message to bands within a four-hour radius of a venue available in the next 24 hours. The basic membership costs $12.50 per month and the PRO Level 24/7 band concierge is an additional $89 per month. Each membership comes with one personalized loadable TourSavant MasterCard, which has discounts at numerous gas stations and hotels (a very smart partnership, in my opinion).

While the concept behind the project and its features sound exciting, I’ve got only one complaint / advise to whoever is responsible for the site itself: get through with your design. Right now, it’s a mess, and such assumption isn’t acceptable nowadays – especially when you are asking for money to become a member of your website. A good example of how a service like this should look like is bandize.com, which seem to include lots of useful organizing and planning tools, but lacks some major TourSavant’s features (I shall test it out in the nearest future though).

Conclusion: once the site gets a serious redesign, I may start recommending this to anyone going to tour in the States.