Book Review: Music Success In Nine Weeks by Ariel Hyatt

I found this ‘Music Success In Nine Weeks‘ to be quite an informative and valuable read.

The author Ariel Hyatt runs her own business Cyber PR that specialises in providing online PR services for independent artists so she knows a thing or two about promoting an artist online.

Each ‘week’ in this book really is an aspect that you should look into and incorporate as part of your overall online promotion and marketing strategy as an artist.

The first week is about getting you to think why you are an artist and about setting tangible goals for you to always aim for and hit.

The second week gets you to think about and craft your elevator pitch for your music. This was one of the most insightful sections of the book for me as most musicians always struggle to convincingly answer the question “So what does your music sound like?”

You need to be able to concisely describe what you do to someone who may never have heard you before, make it sound compelling and pique interest.

Week three is about optimising your website so it is actually useful and not just a pointless use of webspace ie. capturing the details of visitors

In week four, Ariel explains four web 2.0 resources that finds invaluable for cyber promotion.

Week five is about how to effectively use your mailing list that you should be building and encourages the use of a regular newsletter rather than random email every once in a while.

In Week six, we learn of some effective methods to help build your mailing list.

Week seven is about other creative ways you can get people onto mailing list through some offline methods.

Now week eight was a very informative section for myself too. Most of the time, we think the only things we can sell are cds and tickets to live shows to our fans. This section is about expanding the products you can potentially sell to boost your income as an artist, where you provide various products and services of higher increasing value to your fans.

Last but not least, week nine contains some valuable tips on traditional PR, how to create a good press kit and how to format a proper press release. Ariel also provides tips on how to be your own publicist.

There is a lot of useful content in this book targeted towards the musician who wishes to take control of their promotional activities specialising in online methods.

Yet another useful resource for the artist that wishes to take control of their own music career and not have to rely on a record label to pick them up and do everything for them!

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Watch The Opus trailer

The Opus is not another movie about the law of attraction but rather a thought provoking look into how a person can and should look into achieving their true potential.

Here’s the video trailer of The Opus which I watched and quite enjoyed a few days ago.

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Why You Should Watch The Opus…

I’ve just finished watching The Opus and I was pleasantly surprised with it.

I was expecting it to be an extension to The Secret about the law of attraction as it featured quite a few similar speakers like Dr. Joe Vitale, Jack Canfield, Dr. John Demartini, Morris Goodman, Marci Shimoff and Bob Doyle.

However, even though they do refer to the law of attraction in this movie, that’s not what The Opus is mainly about.

It’s about making people think about what their purpose is in life, finding a vision and most importantly, taking action steps to get started towards your ultimate vision.

It’s about allowing yourself to dream and strive for things you feel passionate about rather than limiting yourself.

The law of attraction kicks in as part of the action taking process towards your goals they explain. Events, scenarios and people will be attracted to you along the way but you must take action towards a goal to start with.

Success is always accompanied by challenge and it’s during these times that your vision, passion and commitment of utmost importance.

In summary, The Opus is a movie about learning to maximise a person’s potential through vison, planning and action steps which is the important aspect that The Secret missed out when it comes to attracting the future you wish to have for yourself.

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Are You Using Twitter For Band Promotion?

Twitter is one of those newer web 2.0 things that a lot of people don’t know about or unsure of as compared to say something like Myspace or Facebook.

I’ve also heard from other people that Twitter should definitely be looked into as another useful promotional tool.

I came across this really interesting blogpost the other day about using Twitter for Music Promotion.

Check it out, it’s a good read!

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What Is Twitter & How To Use It

Twitter is one of those social networking ‘things’ that’s actually pretty cool when you understand what it is, and how it can help you stay connected and in touch with people.

Check out the following video:

You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/chrisyong

Thing I like is that you can connect Twitter to sync and update your facebook updates too!

Just add the Twitter app to your Facebook account.

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FREE Software for Podcasting and Audio Editing

You need to check out Audacity.

It’s open source, it’s free, and it’s pretty powerful. It supports multiple audio files, allows you to go in and edit them with a fine tooth comb, apply filters as well as multi-track mixing.

If you’re not ready to spend the big dollars on a professional software solution, Audacity will kick some major butt for next to nothing whether editing a podcast, trimming an mp3 or tweaking some music or voice over.

How To Get Almost Any Software for FREE

Have you heard of open source software?

Chances are if you need a certain type of software to fulfill a certain need, there is an open source version that’s available.

Open source software is completely FREE as it’s usually developed by a community of developers who bounce ideas of each other to update and improve it as it goes along, not by a corporation who use their own developers and sell it for profit.

The best example of open source software is Mozilla Firefox.

It’s always free, always being upgraded and you can get one of the world’s best internet browsers and not pay anything for it.

The same can go for software for audio, video, email, accounting, word processing and a boat load more.

I’ll share some of my favourite open source software in some upcoming posts, in the meantime you should go visit http://sourceforge.net and see what’s available for FREE.

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How to Make a Living as a Full-Time Indie Musician cont.

Carrying on from my last post, I found this great post on the Ariel Publicity blog where successful indie artist John Taglieri’s philosophy on being an indie musician was summarised.

Read more about ‘How to Make a Living as a Full-Time Indie Musician’ at Ariel Publicity (The Original Cyber PR Blog).

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How to Make a Living as a Full-Time Indie Musician

I’ve been listening a lot recently to this audio download titled “How to Make a Living as a Full-Time Indie Musician”.

Music marketing author Bob Baker interviewed indie successful artist John Taglieri and picked his brains on how John took control of his indie music career, what steps he took and how he has been able to give up the day job to focus on music full-time.

There are were many similarities discussed which parallel building a good business, things like

Determining your vision as an artist
Setting regular goals to achieve
Figuring out what success means to you
Working on the baby steps every day to push you forward

They discuss the pro’s and con’s of the indie music path versus the major music path. John describes a major label record deal as a bad car loan and he explains why.

They discuss plenty more insightful topics including using Myspace, publicity and building a fan base.

You can learn more about it on Bob Baker’s website.

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The First Critical Step to Successful Change

Take responsibility for your current situation.

I read about this a little while back in one of Brian Klemmer’s books, and I was recently reminded of this critical step again as I was listening to a Bob Baker podcast – Living a Guerrilla Marketing Mindset.

Examine your current situation and take ownership of it.

It doesn’t mean you’re at fault for what you currently have but the moment you can take responsibility and ownership for it, that’s the moment you empower yourself to enable change!

As long as you feel things are out of your control, you’re powerless to create the change you really want.

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