I can’t believe more musicians aren’t doing this.

The truth is that you could be earning a lot more than you are. But first, you must give people the opportunity to spend more with you. Seriously.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I explain how you can create bundles and packages your fans will eat up.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Bundling and packaging your music products

00:53 – There are people willing to spend more money with you (believe it!)

01:28 – Repurposing your back catalog

01:43 – How to get started with packaging your music products

02:07 – How to create value-added bundles

03:55 – Planning for future bundles and packages

04:25 – Tools you can use to sell your bundles

04:50 – Marketing your products

05:12 – Closing questions

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me.

You know, it’s interesting. I was doing a bit of looking around online, and I found that there wasn’t much on this topic of bundling and packaging your music products together. It’s a good way to leverage what you’ve already created and make more money from it without reinventing the wheel and creating something from scratch.

I’m sure there’s some stuff out there about this, but not much that I could find, so it’s a topic that I felt needed to be covered in more detail. So, I’m going to offer some tips here for you, and I think you’ll find you can do a lot with the music that you’ve already created without making a lot more, unless you don’t have much of a back catalog.

What you may not know is that there are people willing to spend upwards of $100 or even $200 with you [in one sitting]. You just need to give them the opportunity, because they have that money, and they want to be able to support you if they like your work. You’re just not giving them the opportunity.

People are willing to spend more with you - give them the opportunity.Click To Tweet

Let’s say, for example, that you released five albums. Well, that’s great, people might be able to spend $50 to $60 with you to buy those albums, but you’re not giving them the opportunity to spend more. Why is that?

I think that’s often an issue of self-confidence. So, you need to improve your self-image and know that you’re worth more, and know that you can get more.

So, as I’ve already said, you can repurpose your back catalog if you have one, starting at about three or four albums. Any less than that, and you may not have enough content to create a worthwhile bundle. But after that point, you’ve got plenty to work with.

Here’s a very simple way to get started with packaging up your music product. One is to offer a bundle of all your albums, and it should be for a fair price. So, let’s say you’re offering four albums in a single bundle, and normally it would cost people about $50, then you might want to discount it and set it at about $40, but that’s one opportunity most artists are not leveraging at all.

And for those of you who want to take it to the next level, you can offer things like physical merch, your T-shirts, your buttons, your stickers, and things like that and put them in the bundle.

The one problem with offering merch items like that and including them in your bundle is just fulfillment. You’re going to have to package it all up and ship it all out, and go to the post office, unless you already have a company or individual handling that for you.

So, there’s a lot you can do without including physical merchandise. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a bad ideal to include a combination of physical and digital merchandise, because that’s also a great opportunity, but here are some other ideas you can try.

One is to include handwritten lyrics, you can simply scan them and include them in your bundle. You could include transcriptions of your music, and even guitar tabs. You can get this done for cheap these days, and this is a missed opportunity,

Building your brand and networking is the same online as it is offline. It’s just that a lot of people treat it differently, which I don’t recommend.

If you take the time to develop relationships, new opportunities will come your way. If you scream into the void and don’t take the time to add value to others, even your successes will be short-lived.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, you’ll learn how to show up in more places online without expending a ton of effort.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Opening questions

00:27 – A simple brand-building system you can follow

00:55 – #1: Commenting on blogs

02:10 – #2: Reviewing podcasts and products

03:35 – #3: Connecting with people on social media

04:45 – What will happen if you use these strategies

Transcription:

Tired of posting to social media only to hear crickets?

Can’t seem to get any traction with your online marketing efforts?

Getting distracted by 100 different things you could be doing right now to grow your career or business online?

What you need is a simple system to follow. And I’m about to share one with you.

If you just do the following three things diligently and consistently, you’ll be surprised at what you accomplish.

Not only are most people not doing these things, they keep going after the big wins instead of understanding how small, daily wins can get them to where they want to go.

So, let’s look at three strategies to help you build your brand and create new connections.

1. Comment on Blog Posts & Articles

Do you read blog posts? Sure, you do.

But how often do you leave a comment on a blog? Based on all the content I’ve published over the years, I’d say the people who take the time to engage are in the minority. Like maybe 1 to 2%. It might even be less.

The interesting part about those who leave comments? They get remembered.

Now, I’m not talking about messing up other people’s blogs with “good post”, “nice work”, and “thanks” type nonsense. That won’t get you anywhere.

What you want to do is contribute to the discussion. Add value to it. And if you see an opening to help a community member or blog owner, do it.

Help people to help people – not for any other reason. You’ll build new connections and relationships fast.

Help people to help people – not for any other reason.Click To Tweet

You need not be self-promotional to make a connection with an influencer.

Do this on blogs you’re already reading. Depending on the commenting system they use, this could even help you build links to your site. But don’t worry about that. Just become a part of the community.

This will increase your visibility in a lot of places and help you leverage communities and audiences you didn’t even have to spend months and years building.

2. Review Digital & Physical Products on iTunes and Amazon

Do you read books or listen to podcasts?

Then you should be leaving reviews for every book you read and every podcast you listen to.

Commenting targets blogs and online publications across the web. Reviewing targets major online platforms like Amazon and iTunes.

Again, don’t be shallow or lazy. Give people honest feedback. Most people want a good rating. But if your three- or four-star review contains constructive criticism, content creators will appreciate that too. Be real, authentic, and selfless.

The identity of the author has been protected in this review. But you can see how the constructive criticism would help them improve their writing (the actual review is longer).

If you must rate something one or two stars, then think seriously before posting. Maybe it would be best not to talk about these things at all, because reviews increase the exposure of that product or podcast. If you don’t think other people should see it, maybe don’t review it.

I do a lot of reviews of my own. But these are detailed, content-rich reviews.

If you don’t feel like you’re making progress in your career, you have no one to blame but yourself. Perhaps you haven’t even thought about what you’re trying to accomplish, or what steps you need to take to get there. The best way to make steady progress? Make your own rules.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I explain how you can set your own rules, and the benefits of doing so.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Making your own rules and taking charge

01:05 – You are your harshest critic

02:27 – When you make your own rules, it’s easy to make the game winnable

03:59 – Control

04:52 – Achieving builds your confidence

05:04 – Have you made your own rules?

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. Today I wanted to talk about making your own rules, because I think some people out there are discouraged by the progress they’re making or not making in their music careers.

And I think you would do well to remember that you’re in charge of that. Nobody else can tell you what you’re supposed to achieve or what your goals are supposed to be, or what you’re aiming for. Only you decide that.

For example, if you want to be signed to a record label, obviously, a win for you would mean getting a contract offer. But you could set your sights a lot lower if you wanted to. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s up to you.

You can have small goals, and you can have big goals if that’s what you choose to do. And you must be the one measuring against your own rules that you’ve made to play the game.

My first point is that you are your harshest critic. When you put out a new product into the world, whether it’s an eBook, or a new single, EP, or album, you know everything that’s wrong with it because you were involved in the production process.

As a musician, you are your own harshest critic.Click To Tweet

Whether it was your guitar playing being a little bit out of time, your vocals being pitchy, or the drums not totally in sync with the rest of the band. But when your fans go and listen to it, they might not even notice some of those things.

So, there’s no reason to point out to say, “Hey, on this track my guitar playing’s off.” You don’t need to tell them that. If they enjoyed the song, they enjoyed the song.

More often than not, if you go back and listen to some of the recordings that came from the 60s and 70s, there was a lot of live recording off the floor. And there are some amazing recordings from back then, but there are also many flaws. Some of them were even covered up by instruments. Even The Beatles had songs like that, sections where they played the wrong chord and they covered it up with a bunch of horns and things like that.

So, it’s just good to be aware that no one will be as harsh as you are. You are your worst critic.

Second, setting your own rules makes it easier for you to win, and success breeds success. So, when you begin working on something, and you complete it. That’s your first win. And then you put it out into the world, and that’s another win. And, as you achieve more, your confidence will increase, and you’ll get more done.

Setting your own rules makes it easier for you to win.Click To Tweet

I think setting your own rules enables you to increase your confidence continually over time, bit by bit, after every achievement and every win. That leads to momentum. Momentum leads to being more prolific and producing more, and creating more, and putting more out into the world. We want to encourage that success cycle to happen in our lives.

But if you set your goals too high and measure yourself against some of the most amazing people in the world, and you’re just getting started in your music career, or if you’re in year two or three right now, you can’t do what they did. It’s near impossible.

So, measuring yourself against some of the most accomplished musicians or music business people in the world is unfair to yo...

If you don’t feel like you’re making progress in your career, you have no one to blame but yourself. Perhaps you haven’t even thought about what you’re trying to accomplish, or what steps you need to take to get there. The best way to make steady progress? Make your own rules. In this episode of […]

Do you practice gratitude in your daily life? How important do you think it is to be thankful for where you are and what you have right now?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I look at the importance of saying “thank you” in our daily lives.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – My upcoming book, Flashes of Elation

00:47 – In this episode…

00:57 – Pre-orders

01:20 – Gratitude

01:37 – Living in the moment

02:03 – You get more of what you put your attention on

02:19 – My personal development journey

02:40 – What is success?

03:31 – You can be happy today

03:54 – Thanking others

05:04 – Practicing gratitude

Transcription:

Hey, in recent episodes, we’ve been looking at my upcoming book, Flashes of Elation. This is a collection of essays on the topic of creativity, covering many different aspects of creating and the things creatives tend to struggle with.

It’s just as relevant to musicians and businesspeople as it is to photographers, painters, and anybody that does any kind of creative work, like writing.

In this episode, I want to look at a section called “Gratitude.” And this is the last section I’ll be looking at in this podcast episodes, but if you enjoyed these, consider pre-ordering the book. Pre-orders close on June 30, 2017, and you’ll only be able to claim the pre-order bonuses up until that point.

After that, you can still buy the book once it’s launched, because that’s not the launch day. You’ll still be able to pick up the book, you just won’t be able to get those bonuses, which I promise do come at a nominal feel.

So, let’s have a look at gratitude.

Gratitude

Gratitude is something I practice every single day. It doesn’t matter what kind of day I’ve had, I always identify things I’m thankful for and take the time to be grateful for them before I turn my lamp off to fall asleep.

As human beings, we have a tendency of thinking that we live in three distinct timelines – past, present, and future. This simply isn’t true. You are always living in the present. Yesterday is a memory, and tomorrow is just another “today”, much like today, in fact.

You might be thinking, “I’ll be grateful when I have something to be grateful for.” It doesn’t work that way, because that time will never come. Again, there’s only now. You can either be grateful now, or not at all.

You can either be grateful now, or not at all.Click To Tweet

I’m not a proponent of the Law of Attraction, but the idea that you get more of what you put your attention on is true. What you focus on grows. When you think about what you’re grateful for, more things will come into your experience that will cause you to be even more grateful.

I’ve read a lot of personal development blog posts, articles, and books. I’ve listened to a lot of self-help audios. I’ve spent years and tens of thousands of dollars on my business training. I’ve tried a lot of so-called “success principles” that haven’t worked for me. But gratitude is something that’s consistently worked for me, especially in the last two years or so. So I made it a habit.

What is success? That depends on who you ask, because everyone has their own vision of success, and everyone’s model is correct. There is no wrong answer. You get to define what your goals are.

You get to define what success means to you.Click To Tweet

But we forget that we can be happy now, not in some distant time when we’ve accomplished everything we’ve set out to do. As far as today is concerned, that time doesn’t even exist. You’re here now. So it seems silly to me that anyone would defer happiness because they think that tomorrow will somehow be different. Tomorrow is nothing more than an idea. Time is relative. We’ve convinced ourselves that it’s a resource, when in reality it’s just a fact of life.

I am certainly not discounting what can be accomplished in a month, a year, 5 years,

Do you practice gratitude in your daily life? How important do you think it is to be thankful for where you are and what you have right now? In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I look at the importance of saying “thank you” in our daily lives. Podcast Highlights: 00:14 – My […]

Ownership is one of the most important concepts I could teach anyone in the music industry.

Many people do not take responsibility for their lives, let alone their careers. They blame outside circumstances and other people for their lack of results and success.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I explain the advantages and disadvantages of ownership.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Introduction

00:30 – Taking ownership and the blame game

00:53 – Taking responsibility for yourself and your actions

01:33 – The victim mentality

01:58 – Taking responsibility for your music career or business

02:17 – Getting the results you want can take more work than you even realize

02:53 – Learning to take initiative

03:50 – Benefits of ownership

04:22 – Upsides and downsides of partnerships

04:65 – Downsides of ownership

07:46 – Thanks for listening and leave a comment

Transcription:

As I thought back on my personal development journey, my life experience, and my business training, there’s one concept that struck me as being most critical to your success in music entrepreneurship – ownership.

Unfortunately, what so often happens is that people blame others for their present circumstances. They adopt a victim mentality. Nothing is their fault. And their life is not the result of anything they’ve done or the actions they’ve taken.

But it’s really the opposite.

Taking Responsibility is Empowering

First and foremost, we must take full responsibility for our lives. Many don’t realize that this is ultimately empowering. We’ve been conditioned to believe that we should blame other people, events, and circumstances for where we are and who we are in life.

For me, taking ownership was empowering, and I think you’ll find the same thing.

If you adopt the victim mentality, change is up to something external that you have no control over.

But when you say, “I’m responsible,” you can identify how you can change in a positive way. And that means change is up to you. So, you’re not waiting around for anything to begin creating the change you want to see in your life.

So, we must take responsibility for our careers, whether that’s a job, freelancing career, music career, or business. Because that means you’re in control. You can create the change you want.

You might not have the results you want right now. And the truth is, getting those results often takes longer than you think it will. It takes more effort.

But when you say, “if it’s to be, it’s up to me,” and accept personal responsibility for working towards your goals, it puts the power back in your own hands. And so long as you don’t give up, you can make your dreams a reality.

And even if you don’t hit all your targets, if you come close in the process, you can learn from that experience and adjust course as necessary.

Creating Yourself as a Leader

Oftentimes, we say things like, “my boss didn’t give me all the information,” or “so-and-so didn’t get in touch with me.” But we should take it upon ourselves to reach out when projects aren’t moving. Send an email or give them a phone call. Stay in communication until the project is completed, or until they say they can’t do it. At least then you’ll be able to find someone else to help you.

If you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have the resources you need, or you’re not sure where to start, ask follow-up questions of your boss, collaborator, or investor.

Say, “I don’t think I have everything I need to get started on this project. I’m not sure how to move forward with this.” Take the initiative and take it upon yourself to move the project forward.

The Advantages of Ownership

I own the domain name davidandrewwiebe.com. No one else owns that. So long as I continue to make payments, I will own the domain and the website associated with it. It’s my intellectual property, and it’s worth something.

Ownership is one of the most important concepts I could teach anyone in the music industry. Many people do not take responsibility for their lives, let alone their careers. They blame outside circumstances and other people for their lack of results and success. In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I explain the […]

I’m finally back with another career update. I know this is something you guys enjoy, so I didn’t want to leave you hanging. Have a listen to this quick episode to get caught up on how things have been going in the last 90 days.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share about the latest happenings in my life and career.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – What’s been happening with career updates

00:54 – What’s new in my life and career

02:45 – My music projects and recent performances

04:12 – Performing with Adrenalize and Long Jon Lev

04:32 – Getting into a groove with The New Music Industry Podcast

05:30 – Trucking along with the Using Your Power podcast

06:27 – How things are coming along with my books

07:24 – What I’ve been learning in quarter one of 2017

07:49 – Gaining clarity with my goals

08:33 – The point I keep driving home about consistency

12:04 – The people I’ve been learning from – James Schramko, Neil Patel, and Eric Siu

12:47 – What I’m looking to do next and how I’m maintaining my focus

Transcription:

It’s been a while since I’ve done a career update. But I know many of you have been following along with them and have shown interest in them, which is why I continue to publish them.

You probably noticed that I fell behind with the updates in January, and though I could have caught up with them in February, I decided instead to do them in quarterly installments.

If you prefer to get monthly career updates from me instead of quarterly updates, you can let me know.

I was feeling like my career updates were beginning to dominate the podcast feed, which isn’t necessarily what I had in mind. My goal is to create content that helps you, so I don’t want to be talking about me all the time.

But if you feel otherwise, be sure to leave a comment or email me.

What’s New?

January and February were both busy months for freelance content work. I haven’t had as much to do in March with blogging, but live performance has picked up some of the slack. Overall, my work life hasn’t changed that much.

But I am starting to look at making some changes again, as things have become somewhat stagnant. This was prompted by a conversation I had with a friend. There’s an entrepreneurial idea I’ve been tossing around for a while, but I put it on the backburner because I just couldn’t see how to make it work. He asked me a question that got me thinking about the problem differently, and now I see how it could be done.

This is good to remember, because sometimes we might not know where to take an idea, but by talking to others and getting their feedback, we can uncover a path we didn’t know existed.

Anyway, this got me thinking about changes in my work life, and possibly even in my living situation. I feel like there is a season for everything, and I seem to be moving into a new season.

I can’t share all the details with you right now, but they will be forthcoming.

These changes, however, should not affect what I do here at The Music Entrepreneur HQ. If anything, it should give me more time to focus on what I’m doing. I even launched a new music PR service for musicians and music businesses. If you’re interested, I would encourage you to go to the products page on the website to learn more.

I’m also working on putting together a live event for this summer. I don’t have any of the details nailed down yet, as far as where it will be or what the exact schedule will be, but I’m excited about it, and hope you will set aside some time in your schedule in August to be a part of it. It will likely be a half-day event, but this is new territory for me, so I’m starting small and simple. Again, keep an eye on the products page for more information.

My Music

As you probably now, I haven’t come out with any new music releases in a while. I’ve been demoing new songs, but some of that hasn’t been going as expected.

I’m finally back with another career update. I know this is something you guys enjoy, so I didn’t want to leave you hanging. Have a listen to this quick episode to get caught up on how things have been going in the last 90 days. In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I […]