021 – Career Update: November 2016

November has been another crazy month. How have things been going for you (seriously, I want to know)? In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I discuss what I’ve been working on, and how things have been progressing with my projects. Download the PDF Transcription Podcast Highlights: 00:16 – Hi, this is David Andrew Wiebe and this is my latest career update 01:46 – New posts I’ve published on The Music Entrepreneur HQ 05:04 – November resource pack 05:25 – Products 06:11 – Other projects I’m working on 11:02 – Performances 12:22 – The latest news about my music 13:37 – Traffic to The Music Entrepreneur HQ 16:00 – Product sales 16:53 – Lessons I’m learning 21:12 – Thanks for tuning in Transcription: Hi, this is David Andrew Wiebe with The Music Entrepreneur. Today, I wanted to share with you my career update for November 2016. Welcome! I’ve been doing a lot of catching up here in November, but I still don’t feel like I’m totally caught up with everything that I need to do right now. I’ve had a lot of work to do. I’ve had about 20 extra articles to write this month for my regular work. I always make it a point to prioritize paid work over pro bono work even though I’m really passionate about some of the free or pro bono work that I do even with The Music Entrepreneur. I’m coming in to support your dreams, your visions, your goals, your honeypots or projects that you want to do. If you happen to be listening to this on the podcast, just like the last time, you should know that there is also a visual component to the whole thing so there is a video that you can watch and follow along with if you’d like to. But you can also just listen if that’s what you prefer. New Posts First thing I’ll cover is new posts on the website at davidandrewwiebe.com. There is 10 Books Every Musician Should Read in Their Lifetime. This was a guest post via the good folks at OfficeRock.com. Now, you should know I didn’t choose any of these books but they all sound pretty interesting to me and they might be worth the look. The next post that’s new in the site is What is Music Marketing? You’ll probably notice that there is quite a few sort of back to basics posts and content that’s been published on the site this last month, and that is a deliberate thing, partly because I’ve done more keyword research as of late and there are reasons for that. I’ll explain in a little bit more later but creating content around those specific keywords should help me drive more traffic and appeal to more relevant audiences. That’s pretty much what’s happening there. Another new post is How to Make a Killer Set List. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Every band that performs live needs to put together a set list that really captivates their audience and holds their attention. This article talks about that in depth. But it is an article that used to be on the TuneCity blog when that was still around. It’s an updated version of that so I’ve add a little lot of content. There is another post that I took from the old TuneCity blog called How to Budget for Your Music Career. Again, I’ve updated it with additional detail. I think that’s a really important topic for any musician. You need to be able to keep up with your finances to be able to sustain your creativity over the long haul. This post covers that. Then there was Episode 19 of the podcast which was an interview with the wonderful Helen Austin. She’s a Juno award winning songwriter and artist in Canada. She’s not the first person on the podcast with an accent. Although some people might say that I have an accent, so that’s a whole other thing. I probably do have some kind of Canadian accent. Another post that went up is What is SoundExchange? If you’ve ever been curious as to what exactly it is, what SoundExchange does, and how they are different from PROs or performance rights organizations, I would suggest having a look at this because it tells you a lot about that. Another new post is What is Bandcamp? I don’t think there’s too many musicians out there that aren’t aware of what Bandcamp is, so I’ve provided some additional detail like how to market your music on Bandcamp and things like that in this post. There is also What is DistroKid? They are a music distribution service just like CD Baby or TuneCore. Sort of what’s so different about them, and what fascinated me was that they let you pay a one-time fee – I think it’s $19.99 – to distribute as much music as you want. That may be one of their attractive aspects of this specific service. You might want to take advantage of it if you’re a particularly prolific musician that’s constantly distributing their music digitally. There is also Episode 20 of the podcast in which I did Traffic Analysis 2016. If you listened to the last episode, you know exactly what I’m talking about. All this content that I just mentioned will go in the November resource pack once it’s released, but like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been kind of busy. At this point, I’m still working on the October resource pack so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do in that regard. Products I’ll talk a little bit about what’s happening with products on the website as well. As you know, I’m working on my next book Flashes of Elation, but that’s maybe a kind way of putting it because I haven’t really had the chance to work on it a lot as of late. But I do want to get to it and I do want to do a better job of promoting it also. I’m tossing around several other book ideas right now. Now, I won’t really be prioritizing those certainly over Flashes of Elation but they are in the back of my mind as far as what I’d like to do after that. I’m also looking to create 2017 versions or updated versions of all the available products on the website. I think that will help with sales as well. Projects Let’s get into projects. Now, something I haven’t really touched on before is projects because I actually do a lot outside of TME and my usual freelance writing work, so I thought I would cover these a little bit because I think they might be of interest to you and they do connect to the music industry in different ways. The first one is Using Your Power. Now, this is a new podcast. We actually just launched the website here in November. I think it was only a week or two ago that we officially launched. It was kind of a soft launch or I guess a better way of saying that is we didn’t do like a huge promotion when we went live. But I’ll use opportunities like this to let people know about the fact that there is this new podcast that I am a part of. If you like my posts about personal development, reading books and inspiration, I think you’ll really like this and you may even want to move over there instead of The Music Entrepreneur because as you know The Music Entrepreneur is about entrepreneurship in music.  Although I do cover topics like mindset and inspiration and how to overcome mental blocks and things like that – and I think that’s important in every business. I also talk a lot about music marketing and some of the other things that I already mentioned like SoundExchange or Bandcamp, so if you’re looking for just inspiration and personal development topics, this is the one that you’ll want to check out. It’s at UsingYourPower.com. Now, there are several new episodes for November where we actually released a couple in October, but here’s the new ones for November: Buying a House, Pharmaceuticals (yes, we talked about prescription drugs and medications), and Endorsements. There is a variety of different kinds of endorsements from sports to books to businesses to various products. We all endorse on a daily basis. I’m learning to use that in a productive way. It can help you in your career or in your life. We talked about Community. That’s another new episode. Then finally there was an episode on Rest. Also a hugely important topic right now since so many people are talking about hustling and work and going crazy with that. There will be more episodes to come in December, so definitely check us out at UsingYourPower.com. Another project or community that I’m involved in is The Listening Room YYC. Generally, there are two events every month and I’ve talked about them the blog so you can also check out the descriptions or more in-depth descriptions of what exactly these events are. But I helped out at The Circle which is kind of like it sounds, it’s a singer/songwriter circle on November 2. Basically, what happens is every month we pay tribute to a known songwriter that has influenced all of us. And then, a group of three people also learn each other’s songs and perform on them. This makes for a very interesting performance because the performers actually only get together once to practice. It’s riding that boarder of somewhere between like a proper practiced performance and just like an open mic night. It’s somewhere in between those. The other night that happened is the classics which was on November 16, and that’s more of a jazz vocalist tribute type listening room. It’s a lot like it sounds, it’s like a house concert where people come to pay attention to the music and actually listen instead of talking over it and causing a lot of noise. So, the jazz one was also really great. Another project that I’m helping out with is The Question. In both cases with Listening Room as well as The Question, I do a lot of the website work but occasionally I do a presentation with The Question as well. Our regular presenter is Fred Tomagi but in November I decided to do my second ever presentation at The Question. So, I wrote a full presentation and shared it at the November gathering on the 20. So, that was another fairly major undertaking. I think it’s something like 5,000 – 6,000 words. Shows Now, let’s move on into shows or performances....