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#Website Templates For Guitar Teachers
bestonlinecless · 3 years
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Website Templates For Guitar Teachers | Kohbee
There are very few people who want to do a job from 8:00 AM early in the morning till the sun gets down. Working all day long and still not earning enough is a common issue amongst the majority of the working-age group. Due to this reason, more and more people are getting convinced to work in online jobs, where people can work from their comfortable homes till the time they prefer. People can bring themselves to work to their maximum potential if they are working from their cozy beds. So to enjoy these benefits, people have got themselves working in online jobs or following their passion through online platforms, e.g., guitar teaching.
READ MORE..Online Teacher APP, Online apps for Teachers, teaching app, teaching apps, teachers app - Kohbee
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cox65loft-blog · 5 years
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How To Create Your Own YouTube Channel In 10 Minutes
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Working as Marketing Director for a small internet start-up has given me the opportunity to become highly creative and strategic when it comes to launching marketing programs on little or no budget. Design: Once you have the foundation in place you'll then need to do some decorating and add in your channel art and icon. Having a unique look and style that is a reflection of yourself will help motivate you and attract people to your YouTube Channel. Since the channel art is responsive and changes depending on the size of the screen (mobile, tablet or desktop) you'll need to make sure you keep that in mind when designing it so that text doesn't get cut off. You can find a downloadable template guide here to get you started. For the channel icon you can insert your logo here or a photo of your pretty face. If you don't have a logo or banner design you can always hire a designer to create on for you. There are many sites like 99 Designs or Fiverr that are affordable websites to get you started. The validity of different posts on YouTube can be a concern when using this tool in the classroom. What information is true, and what is not? Is there any way you can tell if the information that you are reviewing is true? When students uses YouTube they do not think about whether the information they are choosing is valid. If you were a teacher it would be very difficult to monitor if the students were using correct information, or not. The abundance of videos on YouTube is hard to sift through to find valid information. Not only is there a lot of resources on YouTube, but there are many subscribers that are able to post their thoughts and opinions on YouTube. 3. Prepare to Entertain. When you create your first YouTube videos, there may not be a tone or structure that you have. To stand out from the crowd, make sure you are able to keep the interest of those watching the video. Entertaining youtube statistics and data means that you are able to captivate and keep the attention of your audience through the entire video. It doesn't mean you have to juggle or do something that is out of the way, but know how to keep their attention. Ecommerce product videos will almost certainly reach a portion of customers who were unreachable to you via conventional search engines. youtube statistics for channels Reviewing the age and gender of your video audience may offer new information to build your future product videos upon. A kid plays the electric guitar like Hendrix, Susan Boyle and 6-year old Connie Talbot wow Simon Cowell on Britain's Got Talent and, most recently, Taiwanese Lin Yu Chun sings I Will Always Love You as over 3.5 million viewers watch on YouTube in the first three days. People are suckers for talent, and even more so for unexpected talent.
20 Best Method How To Start how to create a youtube channel
Online reputation management is far from dead. It's do or die. Bottom line, take control of your reputation online now, and it won't come back to haunt you in the future. Social media is a way of life and is finds its way into all aspects of our lives. You can either decide to proactive control it, or allow it to do the same. Which country has the most YouTube users? The above data would indicate the answer is India. YouTube is used by 80% of India's internet population, making the country its fastest-growing market in the world. This growth has been driven by highly affordable mobile plans and the availability of free content on the platform. Given India's attractiveness as a retail destination and the consistently growing purchasing power of its population, YouTube's growth bodes well for businesses that have got their video marketing game down pat. youtube true facts Furthermore, the number of online video viewers in India is expected to grow to 500 million by 2020 on the back of cheaper smartphones being released and the introduction of YouTube Go, a data-friendly version of YouTube. This annotation can be especially helpful because it not only allows you to display text, but also the opportunity to add a link to another YouTube video, YouTube playlist, YouTube channel or the ability for a viewer to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Links to other websites can only be displayed in text form, requiring a user to type the URL displayed in an annotation into their browser as opposed to clicking. Unless it relevant, stick with sending traffic to other destinations within YouTube and keep links elsewhere to a minimum. Being a teenager myself, I can say that lovehopelife's comment is technically true, but doesn't set a very good example for his claim to our overall intelligence. Either way, I think that this is talking more about children who are legitimately too young youtube interesting facts to comprehend motivations behind the Aurora shooting or other such depravities. If lovehopelife had actually read the whole thing, he'd have seen that it acknowledges that teens are generally mature and intelligent enough to handle these sorts of issues. Unlisted - means your video is available to anyone who has the link to your video. This is not a completely private video as people youtube weird facts who have access to the link are able to send it to their friends. It will also not be included in searches on YouTube.
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jazzworldquest-blog · 5 years
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USA: Randy Napoleon blends jazz guitar retrospective with a visionary look forward on Common Tones
Randy Napoleon blends jazz guitar retrospective with a visionary look forward on Common Tones
For Randy Napoleon, known as jazz guitar’s forward-thinking, tradition-loving performer, composer, and professor, study and creation go hand in hand. His philosophy, whether performing or writing, is to immerse himself in the techniques of the masters, then trust his mind, heart, and fingers to respond in the moment. “When you are playing jazz, it is a conversation that moves at lightning speed. There is no time to think. It has to be reflexive, an ingrained response.”
After twenty years of road apprenticeship with some of the most celebrated jazz musicians and groups of our time, Randy Napoleon has, in recent years, shifted his focus to honing his leadership skills at the head of the ensemble. This Fall he is back on tour and will release his fifth record as a bandleader with Common Tones  (out Oct 4, 2019, on Detroit Music Factory), a collaborative record featuring four generations of musicians from Michigan’s continuing jazz legacy. Comprised in nearly equal parts of both rearrangements of the great classics that have inspired him and several of his own originals, teetering at the cutting edge of jazz composition, Common Tones is a summary of Napoleon’s current goals, influences and musical philosophies, and as well as a celebration of his evolving musical lineage. 
From a young age, Napoleon enthusiastically immersed himself in what is often considered the golden age of jazz: the early 40’s through the mid 60’s. While he could be considered a classicist by nature of his musical preferences, he emphasizes that he’s never had an interest in recreating the music that influenced him the most. Yet, this music remains Napoleon’s template for both instrumental and compositional excellence. This is where he finds his tool kit for self-expression and creation with a goal to retain the good feeling of the era while continuing to personalize the language and explore new modes of expression.
Having, come up playing in Ann Arbor and Detroit where the Motown sound easily seeps into local jazz culture,“You’ve Got To Hang On,” featuring Drew Kilpela’s soulful Trombone, is Napoleon’s tip of the hat to that motor city aesthetic. With “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” Napoleon shows that a good melody transcends genre by adapting this poignant Beach Boys ode to a vehicle into swing. Napoleon shows he is a true devotee of the Great American Songbook with a beautiful rendition of “I Married An Angel,” a Rogers and Hart song that he’s been performing in trio format. Bassist Louie Leager and drummer  Nick Bracewel play memorable solos on this one.
For Napoleon, names such as Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Joe Pass, and Kenny Burrell, still represent the gold standard. He continues to study these masters and more daily, knowing there is always a higher level of detail and nuance possible.
“I think of my time with their records as a very personalized lesson,” says Napoleon. “I’m studying technique, sound, language, structure, everything. I emulate horn players and piano players also because it forces you to come up with solutions to play things that don’t lay naturally on the guitar.  Joe Henderson or John Coltrane can lead you into unexplored sounds on the guitar. As Charlie Parker said ‘You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail’. ”
Napoleon holds a lifetime dedication to processing the lessons of his teachers. Having cut his teeth touring and playing over the last twenty years with respected artists across the jazz spectrum such as Bill Charlap, Natalie Cole, Monty Alexander, Rodney Whitaker, and John Pizzarelli. He has performed or arranged on over seventy records, contributing in both capacities on Freddy Cole’s seven most recent records over a thirteen-year tenure, including the Grammy-nominated releases, Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B and My Mood Is You. He performed on The Clayton Hamilton Orchestra: Live at MCG, and his guitar chops are featured on Michael Buble’s Grammy-nominated CD/DVD Caught in the Act. Similarly, Napoleon is a seasoned veteran of the late-night television circuit, having played on The Tonight Show, Late Night With David Letterman, The View, The Today Show, and The Ellen DeGeneres show.
These masters demonstrated to Napoleon what it means to be a jazz musician and a true professional. Before he went on the road with them, he was lucky to grow up in Michigan. The greater Detroit area scene has always been an amazing musical incubator where he was exposed to the transience of touring musicians and the steadfast instruction of local teachers. During this recording, Napoleon was thinking a lot about two of his teachers who have since passed away, the trailblazing tenor saxophonist Donald Walden and legendary bebop trumpet player, Louis Smith. both exposed a young Napoleon to a level of musical depth that he will pursue for his entire life.
Napoleon pays homage to both of these teachers on Common Tones in both arrangement and composition. “If DW Were Here,” an original composition presented as a duo with pianist Xavier Davis is dedicated to Walden’s challenge to Napoleon as a student to avoid clichés and always reach forward in music, and “Mr. Smith” is a cheerful Bebop line featuring bassist Rodney Whitaker and trumpet player Etienne Charles.  The track is played in the style of Louis Smith and dedicated to the dignity and professionalism this teacher instilled in a young Napoleon.
At the same time, Napoleon also includes arrangements of compositions by these two teachers. “Signed Dizzy, With Love” is a Donald Walden composition, which in this is memorable and hip arrangement, features modern giant of the tenor, Diego Rivera, and “Bakin”  featuring saxophonist Diego Rivera, trumpet player Etienne Charles, trombonist Michael Dease and Randy “Uncle G” Gilespie was penned by Louis Smith.
For Napoleon, jazz is and always has been about collaboration. As he’s grown and evolved, both as a musician and a teacher, he’s come to realize that musical exchange is never a one-way street. Attentive to a long-held tradition in jazz of young musicians disrupting, inspiring, and evolving the scene, Napoleon now finds himself in a stage where he collaborates with and is in run influenced by musicians who are much younger than himself. He has met many new voices through his role as an educator and he considers it an incredible experience to witness his students’ transformation into artists. Many of the featured musicians on the album are, in fact, Napoleon’s former students.
“The best young musicians play with reckless abandon. Sometimes they play things that are out of the idiom, and that can be exciting and inspiring to play with. They take me out of my comfort zone and force me to stretch. I like being around musicians who have unbroken musical idealism. They haven’t had their tastes compromised by the commercial industry. They know what they like, and that is where they take their direction. I try to share my experiences with them and expose them to the history. I let their new spirits take me to the future.”
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goodnotesapp · 7 years
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Apple Distinguished Educator and 2-time Juno Award Nominee Shirantha Beddage on “Teaching with an iPad”
Two-time JUNO-nominee Shirantha Beddage is a baritone saxophonist, composer, and educator from Toronto, Canada. His newest album, Momentum, featuring drummer Will Kennedy of the Yellowjackets, was nominated for Jazz Album of the Year (Solo) at the 2017 JUNO awards. His compositions have earned him the Galaxie Rising Star Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival, placements on the Golden Globe-winning TV series "Fargo", and an honorable mention in the Canadian Songwriting Competition. He is currently the Head of Theory in the Bachelor of Music program at Humber College, where he teaches classroom courses, ensembles, and private lessons. His engagement in teaching was honored by Apple that named him “Apple Distinguished Educator“. 
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Shirantha recently took the time to talk with us about some of his teaching workflows that heavily rely on GoodNotes.
Like a lot of other teachers, he was researching online for notebook apps, which led him to discover an article by Teddy Svoronos, who teaches Statistics at Harvard, that describes and illustrates some key features of GoodNotes that make the app particularly valuable for teachers. By integrating GoodNotes on his iPad in the classroom, Shirantha was able to replace PowerPoint and Keynote as his main teaching tools. Of course, we wanted to know why he was able to substitute two rich-featured presentation tools with a rather simple note-taking app for handwritten notes. He let us know that he found it allowed “a clearer, more vivid teaching experience for me and my students.“
“Don't let “Tech” get in the way of “Teach”
Since he relies on mainly two visual activities when teaching, which are “writing on a whiteboard“ and “analyzing printed sheet music“, he was able to simplify the technology integration by using an “all-in-one“ solution with a single app. Many teachers make the mistake to overwhelm their students when trying to use technology in the classroom. Building simple workflows is essential so that "Tech" does not get in the way of "Teach".
GoodNotes comes with a lot of built-in paper templates for every occasion, including some sheet music paper, so it is no surprise that many musicians like Shirantha himself pick GoodNotes as their go-to note-taking app. You can even import custom note-taking templates for other instruments like the Guitar for example. 
Surely, providing great paper templates alone is not sufficient to guarantee an outstanding writing experience. There is one thing that needs to be on point: The handwriting needs to feel natural and should in no way be inferior compared to writing on real paper. Luckily, Shirantha made the right choice: “My handwriting looks very natural in the app, even when enlarged. This allows me to create a variety of detailed annotations on a slide, using the included pens, highlighters, and the shape tool.“
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Shirantha: “This is an example a quick in-class activity. I use the colours, highlighters and the shape tool for more vivid in-class assessment in my Music Theory course”
If you‘re a teacher looking to make your classrooms interactive, Shirantha has a great tip for you: The TV-out mode. When you connect your device to an external screen via HDMI or AirPlay the presentation tools will show up and the app switches into TV-out mode. This means that the toolbar and all other UI elements, like pop-ups, are hidden on the screen for the audience but still show up on the iPad. “[...]the TV-out mode allows me to use Slide Over view privately, so that I can see my lesson plans in OmniOutliner, take attendance, play music, or navigate to a website in Safari during a lesson without distracting the students.“ Connecting your iPad to an external screen during the lesson also comes in handy when your students are working on in-class written exercises. Take a photo of a student‘s assignment and add it to GoodNotes and it will instantly show up on the screen allowing everyone to see it. Shirantha uses it to offer feedback and write annotations right on the photo which “comes in very handy on days when the students bring their original compositions to class, as it allows everyone to read the same sheet music while they’re performing or singing.“
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Shirantha: “[...] the colours and highlighters help to draw the eyes to pertinent info on an otherwise busy slide.”
GoodNotes is the best app for teachers that want to integrate technology into their classroom without overwhelming their students. This way, digital technologies are leveraging the content facilitated during the lessons and are not the center of attention. It is available for iPad and iPhone on the App Store and at a discounted price through the Apple Volume Purchase Program for Educational Institutions.
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6 Facts About Digital Products That Will Make You Instantly Want to Create One
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The hype around digital products has been crazy lately, hasn’t it? Major online marketers like Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk are offering their own online courses. Media sites are selling coaching, PDF guides, and templates as key elements of their monetization strategies. Everyday yoga, photography and guitar teachers are sharing their tips on Facebook Live to help capture leads for their one-on-one virtual lessons.
Basically, digital products are everywhere now.
So you’ve got to be wondering – is it just hype or is there something more to it? And more importantly, is there something in it you can capitalize on?
Absolutely! Not only do digital products come in varying types and sizes, but they work in almost any industry. All it takes is finding the right fit for your audience. What’s more, you probably already have all the ingredients for digital products sitting in your files collecting dust. Why not put them to good use?
Let’s dive into a few reasons why digital products are worth exploring right now.
1. Digital products generate passive income
Passive income is the holy grail of online businesses. The idea of creating something once and making money from it in perpetuity is quite appealing, and there’s no easier way to do that than with creating digital products.
Once you have a product and a system in place for marketing, sales, virtual delivery and handling major customer service inquiries, you can quite literally be earning an income with very little involvement in the process after the initial setup. Imagine all the free time you’d have. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
2. You don’t have to be an expert to make them
One of the biggest reasons people stay away from creating digital products is thinking they have to some kind of industry expert or master marketing guru to do it. Sure, the heavy-hitters like those mentioned at the beginning of this article are doing it, but they’re not the only ones! People at all points of the spectrum are getting into this and seeing results.
Furthermore, the same online marketers making money from these products – like Marie Forleo, Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and even the passive income guru himself, Pat Flynn – are happy to show you how to do it successfully as well.
3. They can be fairly complex or super-simple
When you think of digital products, it’s easy to think of the big stuff like online courses and premium membership communities, without considering all the other simpler, yet extremely valuable, options such as PDF or document templates, photos or curated content. If you’re not ready to dive deep into the waters of content creation, these are great ways to get started with building an audience.
Of course, if you do want to dive into creating bigger products, there’s some great information out there on creating online courses using dedicated tools and best practices. However, there are also plenty of people who create courses by simply posting private videos on YouTube and sharing the links; and those who create ebooks using topic-themed compilations of existing blog posts. So even if you want to go big, you can still keep things as simple as you want them to be.
4. You probably already have some lying around
That’s right. If you have spreadsheets, formatted documents such as reports or checklists, high-quality photos or even a swipe file of inspirational content for your work, you already have a digital product on your hands. Put these together in some nice virtual packaging and you can soon start making money from your work.
Even if you never plan to go big with an e-book or online course, there are people searching online on a daily basis for products just like these to buy, so they won’t have to spend the time creating them from scratch. That’s your opportunity.
5. You can sell them worldwide without the hassle
The ability to access the global market is one of the best things about the internet. The opportunities to be found in selling digital products and delivering them on an automated basis, without any diminishing supply, is another. There’s no packaging, no shipping, no inventory, no handling breakage or spoilage or any of that fun stuff you have to risk when selling physical products.
Sure, you’ll have the occasional email for a refund or customer service query, but that’s barely a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. Plus, a systemized marketing funnel and some comprehensive FAQs could take care of most of this for you. Check in once in a while, from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, to make sure everything is running smoothly, and that’s all it takes.
6. You won’t need a website or a complex payment system
As unnecessary as a complex product is, a complex business setup is likewise skippable in the digital product space.
Thanks to the advent of easy billing solutions like Stripe and dedicated landing page tools with pre-built templates like Leadpages, you can set up shop within a couple of hours. The best part, it will all look professionally done, so no one has to ever know that you’re just getting started.
Start experimenting with a digital product business
So let’s put it all together. Digital products can be simple and easy to create by practically anyone. You may already have the beginnings of one lying around. You only need a simple landing page, for which templates already exist, and a system to promote and drive potential customers to your page, which you can learn from any number of online marketing experts, for free. Finally, you can sell your products all over the world in the blink of an eye with a free payment system you can set up in minutes.
In other words, there’s no reason to avoid creating digital products. Worst case scenario, you spend a few hours creating something great and make only a few bucks for your troubles. Best case scenario, you find a solid income stream that frees up your time and gives you peace of mind. That’s what we call a no-brainer.
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edtechlg · 4 years
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Folio Thinking & Eportfolios
“Folio Thinking” and ePortfolios
A portfolio is a collection of artifacts that assists a person in telling their story of learning, growth, and accomplishment. Originally used by artisans and designers to show potential patrons what they can do. Educators have morphed the portfolio creating exercise into a process that shows students what they can do. Education has historically used a flurry of instruments to assess student progress and achievement; each one attempting to enumerate a very precise aspect of learning. 
Let’s compare traditional assessments to folios...
Tests and quizzes assess the accumulation of knowledge. In its most popular form, multiple choice, the test endevours to set up a situation and ask the student to make a decision. However, the situation isn’t always authentic and the decision isn’t always made using the skill the test desired. In contrast, a portfolio or eportfolio affords itself transparency. The viewer or evaluator knows the skill is achieved because of the evidence present, and the creator knows they have achieved mastery of the skill because they: 1. Know the standard expected of them to master the skill, 2. Evaluate their work against the expected standard, 3. Demonstrate their work meets the expected standard. 
Worksheets and homework are intended as practice, and what it is they assess tends to vary from educator to educator. Are we assessing the ability to learn a skill immediately? Are we assessing effort? There are many areas where repetition and practice are needed to master a skill, but the point to the repetition is the end point, not the practice. I practice my scales so that I can play a song on the guitar, not so that I can keep playing scales. Sadly, we also see many of these assignments fit in what I like to call the search and record category of assignments. These assignments assess your ability to find information in one source and write that information in another spot so you can turn that into your instructor. Proving that you can find information and write it down. A portfolio/eportfolio takes each of these well-intentioned activities and redefines their meaning. Rather than just practice students can log, reflect, and analyze their progress involving practice activities. The living record of research and resources accompanied with student reflection also takes the simple recording of learned information to a place where knowledge is sustained and added to rather than crammed for an assessment and then forgotten afterward.         
Essays, research papers, and student presentations come the closest to assessing verbs higher on the Bloom’s compendium. There is reflection through the revision process. Students are asked to wrestle with an idea or topic, evaluate opinions and sources, and justify assertions. That’s some high-level thinking, but still this assessment is limited by time. The paper or presentation is submitted and the learning stops. The course continues. The student continues, but that piece goes on a thumb drive somewhere to die. When you live that folio life, your work gets resurrected. You grow and learn, and that can be reflected in your work. The academic rigor of a long form assessment like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph are intensified 10 fold by the meta analysis one does with portfolio reflection. Determining the achievement of learning standards offers a new level of understanding that isn’t afforded by the modern essay writing process. 
If I had my way...
As a student pursuing a graduate degree in Educational Technology Leadership, I do not find it very relevant or meaningful to answer comprehension questions about educational technology that professors have identified as important, so they can evaluate how well I memorized information. What is important to me are the skills, research, and resources I aquire over the duration of my degree program. It is much more helpful for me to have a useful product that I created, and to be able to leverage that product to improve my professional outcomes whether that is within an institution or during a job search.    
I would much prefer to be assessed by articulating what I know through a collection of artifacts that shows evidence of learning. As an Instructional Technology Specialist, most of my time is spent trying to educate teachers about the research behind instructional practices. Keeping record of my learning in an easily accessible, digital format allows me to share the work that I do at the graduate level with the teachers I work with at the secondary level. 
Portfolio vs. Eportfolio
Physical portfolios hold a nostalgic property that connects the creator to the artifacts inside. The image of preparation, organization, and presentation coalesce into magic when a crisp portfolio accompanies a potential hire into the interview room. While a digital copy is easy to update and oftentimes much easier to access, the medium can still tend to look less polished if not done right. Through reflection an eportfolio can still give its creator a feeling of whimsy when browsing through old word documents, but where the eportfolio distinguishes itself is through the ability to easily add never-ending amounts of research and resources that would turn a physical portfolio into a file cabinet. Repurposing the eportfolio enhances the likelihood that the creator will continue to use it. Used as a resume, once you get the job, the eportfolio becomes a resource, and then maybe even an instructional tool. 
Eportfolio Test Drives
In my quest to find the right tool to create my eportfolio, I experimented with three different eportfolio options. The following is my reflection and evaluation of these three tools.  
Foliospaces is an eportfolio hosting site that takes a social media approach to the collecting of learning artifacts. It has a very Facebook/Linkedin feel to it. It is set up to make sure that you create a profile with complete contact and biographic information, and then easily facilitates social-media-like sharing and networking. There are some design options available, but this was definitely the most rigid of all of the formats. I would love this for a job search, because it would ensure that I have complete and polished information. The uniform nature of the profile also takes the aesthetic critique away. There are a lot of very portfolio-specific features such as being able to create multiple portfolios and customize access to the different portfolios. This site is free and acts as a warehouse for storing all of your professional artifacts, but it does lean heavily on the career development side of eportfolios which suggests that it doesn’t afford itself to the classroom or personal study.  
Format is a premium site that hosts eportfolios. The creator can easily add content using templates or custom designs. The page builder feature allows users to decide what information is included in the portfolio and lends itself to be used with multiple audiences. Blogs and social media integrate easily which allow for a “lifewide” reach and application. The program itself guides and gives examples, but doesn’t have required information, so in this sense it is much more like a traditional website builder but with added scaffolding to help the user create a complete eportfolio.       
Google Sites can be used to create an eportfolio in a very broad sense. Sites has many applications which allow for products to morph and change the audience and purpose. Google sites affords itself to the connection of artifacts. The click-n-drag interface mixed with the storage capacity of the Drive helps the user collect and edit in a way that feels creative and open, but in reality is constrained to the essential of page building.   
For my personal use Google Sites makes the most sense. I already use G-Suite extensively. I want some element of design freedom. Also, I want to be able to use this portfolio as a resource for my current job, a resume for potential employment, and to track projects and research. The fluidity of Google Sites allows me to construct something that is useful in more than one context
Now, if I were using eportfolios with my students (who are professional teachers at a high school in Texas) I might be more inclined to use Foliospaces rather than Google Sites, because it would prompt my students to include certain information which would be helpful to inexperienced folio thinkers. There is also a built in community on the site and by adding friends users could initiate conversation and reflection about instructional practices and other relevant topics.  
Examples of Eportfolios
PD Day Portfolio: As an Instructional Technology Specialist at a high school, I am in charge of organizing and planning professional development sessions. The content standard I would look to achieve for these sessions is that teachers evaluate, plan, and improve instructional activities that maximize student performance. At the beginning of the day, I would have all of my teachers create a goal for their own learning. Teachers would create a Google Site with evidence of their learning and takeaways or analysis for improvement to pre-existing lessons. As the constructivist theory suggests, I would want teachers to connect what they are already doing in class or what they would like to do with the learning going on during professional development. The simple nature of design lends itself to this sort of quick portfolio building, and the fact that it’s a published web page makes the product more likely to be revisited by the creator. This is what you want with teachers. You want them to refer back to artifacts from a professional development, not throwing them in a file cabinet. This type of technology integration redefines the task assigned and takes it from simply taking in new information and resources to creating authentic learning tools and creating actionable steps for implementing these tools. 
Video Lesson Eportfolio: Like most educators in 2020, I create tons of video content. This content goes into a folder and gets emailed out when teachers or students are in need of the information, but this content deserves to be published and available. A learning objective I am targeting with my faculty is to incorporate media rich resources into their lessons. Creating my own eportfolio of video lessons would allow for easy access and organization of my content. Having teachers build their own eportfolio of video content using Google Sites would also promote sharing and collaboration. This type of technology integration would be a substitution for the use of storage like Google Drive. Ease of use and organization would enhance how much these resources are used. The effectiveness of sharing of ideas and content through peer discussion and brainstorming on student growth is supported by research done by John Hattie. The gathering of these resources and presenting of them in an accessible manner supports refinement in teaching practice rather than reinvention every year or recycling of old content.
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evnoweb · 4 years
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Tech Tools for Specials
Tech tools often seem focused on core classroom subjects like math, science, and history. Many forget the wealth of webtools available for classes many schools call ‘Specials’–those that round out a student’s day and prepare them for college and career. Here are three life-skill classes and online tools that make learning more relevant and fun:
1. Physical Education
Coach’s Eye
Coach’s Eye is a top app I heard about from lots of PE teachers. It is one of the leading video platforms to record an athlete’s performance for playback and review. It records the action and then shows the athlete how to, for example, refine a fastball, analyze a golf swing, break down a volleyball serve, improve soccer skills, or demonstrate proper weightlifting form. Recordings are available instantly, can be zoomed and panned, and can be compared with earlier videos of the student’s action. Users can draw lines, arrows, or any freehand marks right on the video, as well as add audio commentary and slo-mo. The results can be shared via SMS, YT, and FB.
LifeSaver
LifeSaver is a free online simulation of a life-threatening occurrence where you (as the viewer) become the only one around who can help. You are asked questions and prompted to take the next step. Your answers play out on the simulation so you can see what happens based on your choices.
The video is powerful, professional, and pulls the viewer in as a critical part of the emergency.
2. Art
Clip art image of a tree standing alone in the desert
Lunapic
Lunapic is an intuitive way to add filters, borders, effects, text, drawings, animations, and more to existing images. Personalizing freely-available public domain images is a great way for students to use pictures to communicate exactly what they want to say.
When students use existing art rather than draw their own (though Lunapic does offer a blank canvas if students want to start from scratch), take the opportunity to discuss copyrights and plagiarism as it applies to artistic works.
Canva
1.8 million users have created over 15 million designs using the free Canva and it’s one million+ design templates (including font schemes, stock photographs, backgrounds, and illustrations (some free, some fee) to create cards, fliers, posters, newsletters, infographics, and more. These are often free with some fee-based pieces. Drag and drop project parts to personalize the design. Edit photos using preset filters or advanced photo editing tools like brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, and blur. Save as a high-quality image or a printable PDF. Canva provides lots of graphic design video tutorials for even the most basic skill level. These are great for Middle School and High School students, as well as teachers.
Canva for education features 17+ lesson plans from the leaders in tech ed. You can even sign in through Google Apps for Education. Canva not only works on iPads but desktops and laptops.
Pivot Animator
Pivot Animator is a simple free downloaded program (though some find it less than intuitive) that enables students to build animated stick figures and export them as a GIF or an AVI file without any knowledge of Flash animation. Once the animated figure is drawn, students can add backgrounds and other figures to communicate a wide variety of ideas.
Pivot Animator only works on Windows. If you have another platform, try Draw a Stickman (well-suited for elementary school ages)
3. Music
SmartMusic
I teach technology, so I asked musician friend Lawrence Auble, what he uses for tutoring. His recommendation: Smart Music. It’s one of the 2014 category award winners by School and Band Orchestra magazine and the industry standard for teaching band, string, and vocal of all ages and skill levels. The app gives subscribers unlimited access to SmartMusic’s extensive library of over fifty method books, nearly 50,000 skill building exercises, and 22,000+ solo and ensemble titles by major publishers.
It is available on PCs and Macs as well as iPads.
Pro Metronome
Once students have mastered the basics of keyboarding and are ready to concentrate on speed, it becomes all about rhythm, pacing, and consistency. Metronomes are invaluable for those purposes. There are many digital metronomes but Pro Metronome (free with some fee-based options) stands out. It is an iOS app, and starts immediately upon activation (like iTalk does). Since I don’t use it to practice singing or musical instruments, the free version is everything I need. It includes thirteen different metronome tones including a color mode so you can see the beats graphically onscreen, a Pendulum Mode for visual feedback, a voice option for personalization, and is ad-free. Best of all, the beat keeps going, even when you minimize the app, until you close it down.
This is a great tool for every student ready to focus on the touch typing skill level in keyboarding.
GuitarBots
According to the GuitarBots website, “The future of guitar learning starts here.” The app allows the use of either an electric or acoustic guitar, and it employs the tablet or phone’s microphone to hear what the student plays to assess progress.  Awards are given to induce practice and development.  Subscriptions allow the student to dig deeper into the content and features for a greater experience.
***
This barely touches the surface of what’s available. For more, visit my website, Ask a Tech Teacher, and my publisher, Structured Learning, to find more resources, ebooks, lesson plans, and articles.
–published first on NEA Today
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of two tech thrillers. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
Tech Tools for Specials published first on https://medium.com/@DigitalDLCourse
0 notes
corpasa · 4 years
Text
Tech Tools for Specials
Tech tools often seem focused on core classroom subjects like math, science, and history. Many forget the wealth of webtools available for classes many schools call ‘Specials’–those that round out a student’s day and prepare them for college and career. Here are three life-skill classes and online tools that make learning more relevant and fun:
1. Physical Education
Coach’s Eye
Coach’s Eye is a top app I heard about from lots of PE teachers. It is one of the leading video platforms to record an athlete’s performance for playback and review. It records the action and then shows the athlete how to, for example, refine a fastball, analyze a golf swing, break down a volleyball serve, improve soccer skills, or demonstrate proper weightlifting form. Recordings are available instantly, can be zoomed and panned, and can be compared with earlier videos of the student’s action. Users can draw lines, arrows, or any freehand marks right on the video, as well as add audio commentary and slo-mo. The results can be shared via SMS, YT, and FB.
LifeSaver
LifeSaver is a free online simulation of a life-threatening occurrence where you (as the viewer) become the only one around who can help. You are asked questions and prompted to take the next step. Your answers play out on the simulation so you can see what happens based on your choices.
The video is powerful, professional, and pulls the viewer in as a critical part of the emergency.
2. Art
Clip art image of a tree standing alone in the desert
Lunapic
Lunapic is an intuitive way to add filters, borders, effects, text, drawings, animations, and more to existing images. Personalizing freely-available public domain images is a great way for students to use pictures to communicate exactly what they want to say.
When students use existing art rather than draw their own (though Lunapic does offer a blank canvas if students want to start from scratch), take the opportunity to discuss copyrights and plagiarism as it applies to artistic works.
Canva
1.8 million users have created over 15 million designs using the free Canva and it’s one million+ design templates (including font schemes, stock photographs, backgrounds, and illustrations (some free, some fee) to create cards, fliers, posters, newsletters, infographics, and more. These are often free with some fee-based pieces. Drag and drop project parts to personalize the design. Edit photos using preset filters or advanced photo editing tools like brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, and blur. Save as a high-quality image or a printable PDF. Canva provides lots of graphic design video tutorials for even the most basic skill level. These are great for Middle School and High School students, as well as teachers.
Canva for education features 17+ lesson plans from the leaders in tech ed. You can even sign in through Google Apps for Education. Canva not only works on iPads but desktops and laptops.
Pivot Animator
Pivot Animator is a simple free downloaded program (though some find it less than intuitive) that enables students to build animated stick figures and export them as a GIF or an AVI file without any knowledge of Flash animation. Once the animated figure is drawn, students can add backgrounds and other figures to communicate a wide variety of ideas.
Pivot Animator only works on Windows. If you have another platform, try Draw a Stickman (well-suited for elementary school ages)
3. Music
SmartMusic
I teach technology, so I asked musician friend Lawrence Auble, what he uses for tutoring. His recommendation: Smart Music. It’s one of the 2014 category award winners by School and Band Orchestra magazine and the industry standard for teaching band, string, and vocal of all ages and skill levels. The app gives subscribers unlimited access to SmartMusic’s extensive library of over fifty method books, nearly 50,000 skill building exercises, and 22,000+ solo and ensemble titles by major publishers.
It is available on PCs and Macs as well as iPads.
Pro Metronome
Once students have mastered the basics of keyboarding and are ready to concentrate on speed, it becomes all about rhythm, pacing, and consistency. Metronomes are invaluable for those purposes. There are many digital metronomes but Pro Metronome (free with some fee-based options) stands out. It is an iOS app, and starts immediately upon activation (like iTalk does). Since I don’t use it to practice singing or musical instruments, the free version is everything I need. It includes thirteen different metronome tones including a color mode so you can see the beats graphically onscreen, a Pendulum Mode for visual feedback, a voice option for personalization, and is ad-free. Best of all, the beat keeps going, even when you minimize the app, until you close it down.
This is a great tool for every student ready to focus on the touch typing skill level in keyboarding.
GuitarBots
According to the GuitarBots website, “The future of guitar learning starts here.” The app allows the use of either an electric or acoustic guitar, and it employs the tablet or phone’s microphone to hear what the student plays to assess progress.  Awards are given to induce practice and development.  Subscriptions allow the student to dig deeper into the content and features for a greater experience.
***
This barely touches the surface of what’s available. For more, visit my website, Ask a Tech Teacher, and my publisher, Structured Learning, to find more resources, ebooks, lesson plans, and articles.
–published first on NEA Today
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of two tech thrillers. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
Tech Tools for Specials published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow
0 notes
crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes
templified · 6 years
Text
Kalvi, WordPress Education Theme and Learning Management System | Templified
New Post has been published on https://templified.com/kalvi-wordpress-education-theme-and-learning-management-system/
Kalvi, WordPress Education Theme and Learning Management System
Welcome to Kalvi, a great looking education management and online learning web template for WordPress.  Whether you’re looking for a template to build a website for the world’s best university, a daycare center or online learning environments, this theme has some great looking options and plenty of features.
Kalvi is an Educator’s dream come true, whether you are creating a website for a single online course, and entire Academy, online learning or learning at that actually University, this theme has tons of features. There are a variety of class types including featured classes, on-site classes with location map, classes with a timetable plugin classes with certificates and badges and numerous different registration options. There are a variety of course types as well, course with group, news and events, featured courses, courses for members only, courses with featured videos and a whole bunch more.
You’ll be creating pages with the handy drag and drop page builder setup that is included for free. Drag-and-drop page builders make it simple for a beginner to set up a great-looking website.
You’ll have tons of options for setting up online quizzes as well, there’s a very simple to use quiz form that helps you build very clear and concise tests or quizzes. There’s an intro page and an instant results page as well. This theme comes with the Kirki customizer, which is a simple to use and powerful theme customizer option that’s a turnkey solution to theme options.
Oh yeah, let’s hear what the developer, Design Themes, has to say about their WordPress theme.
Kalvi is a unique looking and highly advanced Learning Management Education System WordPress theme. It is a complete WordPress theme for the education websites. This theme offers numerous awesome features like online/onsite classes, online courses, teacher profile, extended user profiles, lesson management, quiz system, video hosting, ranking/rating system, questions system, attachments, tracking course progress etc.,
Great intro, couldn’t have said it better myself.
You’ve got several different styles to choose from, each appealing to a slightly different demographic.  Here are some of those demo styles.  The first is for online learning courses.
I suppose they don’t actually have to be for online learning courses, I mean who would really know the difference? Whether you’re learning at home or in a classroom, learning is still learning. Anyway, this website is at least attempting to showcase an online learning environment and there are a few features that are very specific to online learning.
This demonstration site is for an International Learning organization, I think the appealing part of this one is at the flat and trendy style. If you’re selling training courses online, tutorials and similar products that you want to lock behind a paywall, I think that a thing like this could be great.
And here’s one for the kids, a kindergarten Style WordPress template that is for daycare centers and other similar businesses.
Here’s a cool demonstration of what a dance school might look like, though I suppose it doesn’t have to just be about dance, perhaps an aerobics class or fitness center, yoga studio or something similar to that? The choice is up to you, the style is a broad base for lots of different kinds of businesses.
And finally here is another online education course demo this one having a point system, whatever that is supposed to mean? I honestly have no clue what they’re talking about. I feel a little bit like Bill S. Preston Esquire from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, you remember the scene where they learn how to play guitar real quick? Well, I just went online and try to figure out what an education points system WordPress theme is. But while Bill S. Preston Esquire and “Ted” Theodore Logan or whatever his name was, ended up learning how to absolutely shred guitar, I’m back empty handed. I have no idea what they mean. If I had to guess, I’d say it was about answering questions online and earning points for it? Kind of like answers.yahoo.com or whatever that website is.
So, now that I’ve failed to solve that riddle, I guess I’m just about finished.  If you’re looking for more options for WordPress education themes, check out our collection.  It’s packed with great stuff and I think you’ll really like it. We’re constantly adding a new themes to our website and we plan to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So, if you didn’t end up liking this WordPress template and you don’t find what you’re looking for on our collection of Education WordPress themes, will be back very quickly to add more great-looking WordPress themes to that, and every election. We do our best to always have fresh selection of WordPress names that you can select from.
DemoMore Information Get Hosting
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crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes
crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes
crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes
crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes
crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes
crosbyru-blog · 6 years
Text
How to Become a Successful Independent Artist or Songwriter
[ad_1] By far the most important skill to have if you wish to become successful with anything, is ATTITUDE. An old Chinese proverb once said, "90% of the journey towards success is over once you have stepped outside your front door." The reason many people fail, is because they'd rather stay in and watch the TV.Of course, that first step outside is a philosophical one. As a musician or songwriter, you spend the vast majority of your time being creative. If you think that writing a great song, or playing an instrument well, is the hardest part of being a successful artist, you are wrong.Despite all the skills you need to know and perfect in order to make your music shine, these pale into insignificance compared with the hard work and other skills you will need to learn in order to record, market and sell your art successfully.Fortunately, most creative people also seem to excel at other things. The term "Jack of all trades" could quite easily apply to most musicians or artists. After all, the first thing most artists have to learn, is how to find time for their art whilst running a home AND holding down a Day Job in order to pay the bills! It is therefore not unusual to find musicians who are also Physicists, Engineers, IT Professionals or Teachers, to name but a few.Most of these people are quite content to keep music as a hobby, at least whilst bringing up a family. However, we all get to a stage in our lives (usually once the kids have grown up and left home), where we want to cease working for a "Living", and instead, work for our own "Satisfaction".There are few things in life more satisfying than being admired for something we created. If our creations also manage to influence others, then it is even more rewarding.This "first step outside your front door" is taken when you decide to pause from the creative aspect (the ideas), and take a positive step towards learning new skills, or employing others who can do those things for you.There has never been a better time in the history of mankind, to take those steps, either by yourself, or with others who would help you.--Where you used to have to pay for tutoring, or buy books, in order to learn the techniques of songwriting, or playing an instrument, you can now find scores of articles on the Internet (like this one!) that will help you for free.--Where you used to have to save up a considerable amount of money to pay studio costs and hire session musicians to make a decent demo recording, you can now find all the necessary tools, and even the musicians, on the Internet who would help you for little or no cost at all.--Where you needed to sign a record deal in order to be able to afford a producer and a master quality studio, you can now buy your own PC and some music software, and collaborate with a producer online, who will give you the capability to make radio-ready recordings.--Where you needed a record company with a huge advertising budget to market and sell your recordings, you can now (with some hard work), market and sell your CDs to the Whole World for next to nothing.-------------------------------------------------------------------The Music Industry doesn't like the changes that the Internet has brought to the business. Digital media can be freely copied by anyone with a PC, anywhere in the World. No longer do the record companies just have to worry about the CD pirates who manufacture illegal copies to sell on the black market; they also have to now worry about every PC-literate man, woman and child, making their own copies too! This has led the music industry into a perpetual fight against filesharers (making enemies of many consumers in the process), instead of embracing the business advantages that the Internet brings to us.The Music Industry still believes that 8-16 year-olds buy most of the records, so they are still catering primarily for that market. Recent industry figures are telling a different story, and the secret is the "Baby Boomers".Yes ... The same people who created the above market perception in the 70's by buying the largest proportion of records ever, whilst they were teenagers, have now grown up! The largest age group to buy CDs TODAY, at 26% of the population, are over 45. Not only that, but they still like the same kinds of music as they did then. So there is no need to change your art to fit today's teenybopper market if you aren't that way inclined.Now that we know the secret, we also know that the next big thing in music, isn't going to be another form of Hip-hop, Techno, or R'n'B; but a return to real music, such as was made during the 60's and 70's. However, we'll be creating it with modern tools on a Home computer DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system, instead of in a multimillion pound studio complex!So, whilst the Music Industry is still hesitating by trying to shun the new digital era in favour of antiquated business models, hardware in the form of CDs, and markets that still only cover limited territories; we can now jump ahead of them onto a more level playing field, find our own markets, and sell to the Whole World with only a simple website!Sounds easy, doesn't it? ... Well, that is the first hurdle you will face. So many musicians think it is easy, that there are millions already doing it! So to be successful you will need, like any other business, a proper business plan.CONCLUSIONThe road to being a successful independent musician, begins with ATTITUDE.You need to find enough time in your schedule to drop the guitar & scoresheet and use your creative energies towards developing a proper BUSINESS PLAN. This means taking a step back and listening to your music through Joe Public's ears. You need to think up a business name, logo, and short slogan that encompasses what you are, and what your music is trying to say to people.Register your business "name" by buying a domain name that suits you as soon as possible.Pages on free MP3 sites and Free domains do not give you a professional image. You MUST have your own site, or at least something that offers you a unique look and features of your own. If you want people to find your music unique & special, then you also need an image that is unique and special. That goes for your email address too. Genuine business people don't use their Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo addresses for formal communications.Make sure all your paperwork is in order.If you are planning on making an eventual living from your art, you will need to be registered as a business or as a self-employed sole trader. You need to make sure your tax and income are all accounted for, so you may have to buy yourself an accounting package, or learn to use Excel Spreadsheets, or employ an accountant. There is also a lot to learn about how copyright systems work and whether you feel you need to form your own publishing company, record company, or register your copyrights with an agency. Much of this will depend on the laws of your home country. Alternatively, you can sign a non-exclusive deal with a small independent label or publisher to handle all the music-related paperwork for you.You need to either take the time to develop some basic web design skills, buy ready-made templates, or employ someone to design a site for you.Make sure your logo and colour scheme is fluent throughout your site, your stationery, your CD artwork, and any other communications device, such as email. Make sure your site includes some way of gathering a mailing list, such as a response form or a "double opt-in" form of registration.Plan a marketing strategy.Marketing is all about finding the right market for your product. This may involve a certain amount of consumer research. This can be expensive, so use the Internet as much as possible to find groups of people who like similar music to yours. Try to find out other things about these people so that you can get a clearer picture of who would be interested in your music.Plan a promotional strategy.Gather contact lists of magazines, local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Plan an 8-week promotional strategy leading up to the release of your CD. Use any press, or airplay you get as a news item on your website. If you have some money to invest, plan a set of concert dates in local venues for dates close to any publication dates. Plan a poster or postcard campaign. Contact local charities, hospitals, schools and shops, in fact anyone who might be prepared to play your CD in a public place. If you want local record stores to stock your CD, you will also need barcodes and counter display boxes. Use the mailing list you have been gathering from your site to promote any news to your fans with a regular newsletter. Offer free tickets to gigs, or run competitions for free CDs. Use your fans as extra leverage to increase the momentum of your promotional campaigns.Don't under-sell yourself.Make sure that any music you decide to give away as a promotional MP3 is different in some way to the music you are selling. E.G. It will either be an early un-mastered mix (demo), or a different mix, or a song you are never going to release for sale. Otherwise, make sure all samples you make of your records, are either short clips, or low-fi mono samples. The price you set for your releases should never be too far below that of major record company releases. Your price tells your customer what "stage" you are at in the business. Price yourself too cheap and you are more likely to lose customers because they will automatically assume you are an "amateur".Make yourself and your CD easily accessible to your fans.Always answer any emails promptly. Check your emails at least once a day and reply to any new enquiries immediately. The average time expected by most people for a response by email is 12-24 hours. Do not SPAM. Make sure you only send bulk emails to people who have opted into your mailing list, and if anyone wants to opt out, make sure you delete them straight away (not several weeks and 10 disgruntled emails later!). To contact businesses, you will need to write individually and personally to each of them. Always use a business "signature" with your artistic or business name, slogan, web site address, and possibly your telephone number, on every email you send. If you have released a CD, make sure you add the link to that too! If you have had your CDs duplicated professionally and are barcoded, you can also expand from selling them in internet stores such as iTunes, Amazon, and CDbaby, to high street stores. You must also sell them from your own site or at least provide links to the stores where they are available.Never stop "Networking"Carry your business cards with you at all times. At every conversational opportunity, if someone happens to mention music, or gigs, make sure you advertise yourself as an independent artist. If you have a modern mobile phone or MP3 player, make sure your latest CD is on it! You never know who you'll bump into in the supermarket. The first thing someone will ask when you mention you are a recording artist is "What kind of music do you play?" If you have your MP3 player with you, you won't even have to answer! (This is always a difficult question for an artist). You can just play it to them! Also make sure you frequent all the music-related newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, MP3 sites, chat rooms etc. at every opportunity.Finally, my "Promotional Tip of the Week"Familiarise yourself with all the P2P filesharing systems that the music business hates so much. You can use them to your advantage. Make ads or lo-fi samples of your music or CD and label them like this...John_Mckeon_Friends_SoundsLike_Simon_&_Garfunkel.mp3Make copies labelled with every well-known artist you think you sound like, and keep all the files in your shared folder. Then, whenever you are logged onto the service and someone searches for music by these well-known artists, your music will be on their list of results!-------------------------------------------------------------------- [ad_2] Source by Lynn Monk https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/how-to-become-a-successful-independent-artist-or-songwriter/
0 notes