End of a Blog…

I’ve decided to ‘decommission’ this blog as I focus my efforts elsewhere. I’ll leave it up for maybe 6 months or a year, and then if the view stats are limp will mostly likely delete the whole blog. I know I could just keep it up, but in this world of so much white noise on the internet, it bothers me that I’m adding to it if there’s no purpose.

Regarding my music and demos, I may start something under my muso name ‘Donak RV’, though it could be just a Facebook page or something. At the moment I have a presence on Twitter and Soundcloud which I will continue for my demoes…

Tweets by donakrv

I will continue the ‘Struggling Muso’ cartoon series over at Munhwa Experience, and you can follow it under the Strugmo category (or at http://munhwaexperience.wordpress.com/category/struggling-muso/). Of course you can buy the book of the first two annals from this blog on iTunes.

strugmo episode 6

Links:
The next episode…

(Click here to start from Episode 1 this series)

strugmo episode 5

Links:
The next episode …

(Click here to start from Episode 1 this series)

A silly Gaga cartoon…

Beware the record contract…

Another of my carts portraying the music executive as the contractual bogeyman

A couple more carts about the music biz…

Don’t settle for the 360 record deal when 480’s are out there! Forget T-shirts.

When merchandising, why not make a home brew?

My latest cartoon: deep bassplayers…

If you’re gonna have a band, you need one member to be deep and philosophical, to inspire the lyrics and music and take the listeners to the deeper, esoteric levels…

Music and KPIs…

On one of the music bloggers I was reading the other day I was struck by a comment made by one indie artist who said that reading books on marketing has made a huge difference on how she has been running her music career/business. In fact she stated her goal was to read one book a week -I guess she has lots of time when travelling on tour…

Well, I don’t have a music business, but I thought it would be useful since the principles of online marketing can be applicable to any online endeavour really. So I borrowed “Online Marketing” from the library for a bit of inspiration -one key point to note was having KPIs -Key Performance Indicators.

In the information age it’s easy to get statistics on almost everything -even free online social media accounts have quite sophisticated stats these days -just check out Youtube. But the danger is getting overwhelmed by too many stats, too much info -the ‘white noise’ so to speak. How does one focus?

But first deciding what your personal goals are, and then aligning those goals with the relevant statistics -these are the Kep Performance Indicators. The stats that won’t just give you info, but will tell you whether you’re getting closer to your goal or not and hopefully motivate you to improve next time.

So now I have to go back to the drawing board and decide what my KPIs are. Are they just hits, or people who stay, like subscribers etc ?

On Typical Musos…

I came across this post in my RSS reader:

“30 Tips For The Typical Musician”  By Mike Venti

Meaning, ‘how to be a typical muso embodying all the flaws, drawbacks, weakness and downright annoying features of an egotistical, mediocre muso’. That’s a bit harsh, but there’s an ‘inner muso’ in every muso, if you get my drift.

Back in the 90’s when I was with my band, I was very much guilty of several of these characteristics, but so were the many around at the time. This one in particular:  Beg your friends and family to come out and see you for the third time in a month.

Here’s another: Never take a gig playing covers for fear of being average… We shouldn’t learnt more covers just to learn from the songwriting etc…

And this one when hastling booking agents: Understand that anyone who doesn’t return an email or a phone call is out to get you and personally dislikes your music. We didn’t take it personally like that, but we complained when people didn’t get back to us, and we didn’t persevere. The lesson: It’s show business, it’s going to be tough to get gigs…

 

And also the simple disconnect between reality and thinking “we’re going to make it” because some producer for a famous band would sooner or later walk into a pub we were playing in and suddenly see our genius.

But back in those days the labels held the power over distribution, so it was assumed that to make it you had to get a record deal, so the average muso could deceive him or herself into thinking it was all about being discovered and signed.

The problem with that thinking was that it was too easy to take DIY hardwork out of the equation. These days you can’t deceive yourself like that anymore -it’s all DIY, and there’s nothing stopping you (theoretically) from getting out there and building a following from the bottom up.

It just takes a lot of effort to play your instrument well (or sing well), write good songs, times that by 3-5 cooperating with other band members, record a demo, shop it around to get gigs, put up your online profile and take it from there…

New demo

I’ve got a new demo up, another instrumental. you can check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cu4FhECcKo

Also, met my old drummer the other day at church… nice to catch up. We were in a band together in the 90’s, but things have changed a lot since then, and we’ve all gone out separate ways. Music is still my passion even though it’s just a hobby. I don’t have a band now, but I enjoy just arranging and working on demos… Now I’m more into the songwriting process, and I have my other hobbies that keep me busy, such as blogging and cartooning (Munhwa Experience).

The drummer enjoys a bit of tapping, but he doesn’t have a kit these days -he’s more focused on saving and the corporate ladder. Sometimes I think it would be cool if the band got back just for a reunion bash -I’m still friends with the singer, but his passion is home brewing now anyway. And we’ve lost contact with the other member  -and half the band is all married with kids.

Interesting seeing other bands that were gigging round the scene make it now -I mentioned to my drummer that we’d supported a band back then that’s quite successful now -COG. I’m full of admiration for those guys because we saw from the beginning how dedicated and focused they were. At that gig in the southwest of Sydney the pub was virtually empty (this was the late 90’s) -for them it was probably more just a practice gig. For us it was the usual. We’d forgotten to bring the ride with the drum kit and they kindly lent us theirs.

The message for me, (which I was telling the drummer), was that success is attainable for the truly dedicated and persevering. Many bands have the talent, but it’s putting in the hard yards and developing the sound. But COG sounded great live back then, imagine how they sound now!

But the toll of touring must be heavy, and that was something our band wasn’t willing to do, which was the next level for us to shoot for -hire a van and tour up the east coast of Australia on a shoe-string budget. We were all too nerdy, conservative and cautious…

I feel we had the songwriting and the tightness, but we didn’t develop stage presence and work on our live act, and every member needs to have the same commitment -it’s like a chain being as strong as its weakest link. And a few albums on we would’ve developed the songwriting into something special, instead we never got past the 12 song demo stage…