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MUSIC BIZ INSIGHT #5 Power Reading for Busy Music Professionals Hope you're hungry! MUSIC BIZ INSIGHT is published for musicians, songwriters, managers, label reps, booking agents, entertainment attorneys, studio owners, music publishers, and all others involved in the music business. Its purpose is to help boost your business, find new markets, make the right connections, develop professionally, work smarter and improve your bottom line. "As a general rule, the most successful people in life are those who have the best information." Benjamin Disraeli Published bi-monthly by Peter Spellman, Director MUSIC BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: Turning Music Business Data into Useful Knowledge. Career and Business-building books, articles, consulting and more. P.O. Box 230266, Astor Station, Boston, MA 02123-0266, USA Phone: 978-887-8041 Email: success@mbsolutions.com Website: www.mbsolutions.com © 1997 - 2003, Peter Spellman, Music Business Solutions
Tips for Screening Entertainment Attorneys Sooner or later you will need legal counsel as a musician, songwriter, label owner or industry careerist and it's important to know how to select the best counsel for you. Here are a few tips to help you with the screening process: 1) Get a Specialist. The value of a music attorney is determined in large part by the quantity and quality of his or her contacts in the music/entertainment field. Artists should be cautioned against the natural inclination to use a friend, relative ("My Cousin Vinny"), or family lawyer to fill their entertainment law needs. This is fine if they're qualified. However, the trend today is toward greater legal specialization than ever before because of the increased complexity of our commercial society. Unless a lawyer regularly deals with management, recording, and music publishing contracts; copyright protection and administration; and licensing of intellectual and artistic property, chances are he or she won't sufficiently understand or appreciate the industry and its peculiar problems. 2) Get a Referral. A referral from a satisfied client is a good start but... 3) Get References. Always ask the attorney for at least two client-references you can call. This is a perfectly reasonable request and any lawyer who has a problem with this should be your cue to exit. Be sure the work the lawyer did for the client is similar to what you need and be sure also that the work was performed in the last 6 months to a year (this business changes too fast for sporadic legal excursions). 4) Get the Dirt (if there is any). You can make two important phone calls to find out if there have been any complaints lodged in your city or state against this attorney. They're calls worth making:
B. The Better Business Bureau ( http://www.bbb.org/). The Better Business Bureau Directory lists the addresses and phone numbers of Better Business Bureaus in the U.S. and Canada. 5) Have a Meeting. Most attorneys will waive their usual hourly fee for the first consultation. At this consultation meeting you'll want to:
B. Inquire about the extent and quality of the attorney's pertinent industry contacts. C. Find out how the fee structure would work to avoid any misunderstandings. A note on legal fees: Sometimes you'll need legal counsel for short-term projects like putting together the appropriate performance and partnership agreements, trademarking your business/band name, incorporating your business, and copyright registration. These kinds of projects are usually paid for as a "flat fee" based on the attorney's hourly rate. Longer-term projects and legal representation to the music industry (to labels, publishers, merchandise companies, etc.). These are often paid in "points" (percentage points) of contract advances and/or future royalties. D. Try to discern how accessible the attorney is to client phone calls, questions and document review. E. Feel the vibe--Trust your instincts. 6) Do-(some of)-it-Yourself. A lot of groundwork can be done by yourself when it comes to short-term legal needs. For example, modern communication technologies like the Internet, let you do a national trademark search from your desktop. For tips on this and other do-it-yourself legal resources contact Nolo Press (http://www.nolo.com) or call (510)549-1976 for their free self-help law books and software catalog. 7) Another first-stage option for longer-term legal projects is the VLA (Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts). Founded in 1969, VLA was "the first legal aid organization in the U.S. dedicated to providing free or low-cost arts-related legal assistance to artists and arts organizations in all creative fields who cannot afford private counsel." You must apply for assistance and there is an application fee.The main VLA office is in NY (212/977-9271; 1285 Avenue of the Americas, 3rd flr., New York, NY 10019) and they have satellite offices all over the country.
Genre Spotlight: Children's Music Introduction Five years ago the Major labels signed a bunch of kid's artists only to give them the heave-ho when it became apparent that pop-level sales weren't going to happen. But the children's music niche has been slowly and quietly growing in recent years. Big name artists like Kenny Loggins, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Jimmy Buffet have or will be putting out children's albums. Others have contributed to kiddie compilations including Celine Dion, Seal, Alison Krauss, the Red Hot Chili Peppers (huh?), Taj Mahal and Maria Muldahr. Commenting on the breadth of the children's music market, Kenny Loggins recently commented on how his "demographic has widened from 23-40 to 2-65." Children's audio has retained a market share close to 0.5% over the last five years, according to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). With overall music sales of $12.3 billion in 1996, this translates to a hefty $61 million. And it's important to realize this does not account for children's music sales via mail-order catalogs, by individual artists and through retail outlets not subscribing to Soundscan, making that $61 million figure actually much higher in reality. Advantages to Marketing Children's Music There are five major advantages to marketing children's music today: 1) High profit margins: Since production costs are generally lower than those of mainstream music, and since a "classic" recording can last for years, there can be greater profits realized from a strong-selling children's album. 2) Limited returns. There are very few returns with children's music, basically because manufacturers provide adequate quality control for the pressings and the parents make the purchase. If the child does not like the recording, he or she simply ignores it. 3) Longer shelf life. While very few children's albums sell a lot of copies in a short amount of time like most pop hits, they do provide recordings that last year after year. Consequently, the retailer knows that in the long run this product will sell. 4) Seldom obsolete. Interest in classic children's recording--such as Peter Pan, or Snow White, or a collection of classic favorites--lasts from generation to generation. Thus a recording will appeal to the next generation as well as it did to the previous generation--unlike pop hits that are usually outdated within several years. 5) Airplay not required. Since the labels do not have to compete with other musics for radio time, they avoid the costs and problems of promotion on the radio for their product. Some of these ideas were adapted from the book, "Music in the Market" by Don Cusic ,(1996, Popular Press). Some Insights into the Children's Music Market:
Top Children's Music Labels, Catalogs & Artists
Children's Music & Market Links: Just about everything a children's entertainer or music company needs in terms of promotion and marketing outlets can be found on the Web. Check out these two particularly useful sites: The Children's Music List (http://www.cowboy.net/~mharper/Chmusiclist.html). A terrific resource for those involved in children's music. Has links to children's music catalogs, retailers, record labels, radio shows and much more. Also serves as an excellent "jump site" for further web explorations of this topic. Children's Entertainment Association ( http://www.kidsentertainment.com/cea/). The country's leading trade association for those involved in children's entertainment. CEA members come from all areas of the industry, including music, theater, performance, publishing, film, television, video, and radio
)))Illuminating Trivia((( Thirty Artists Who've Never Won a Grammy (thru 1995)
* Winners of Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (not selected by the voters)
1) First, some Big Picture explorations. The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry by Robert Burnett (1996, Routledge, $16.95), is a comprehensive look at the maturing music industry in this time of great change. The big change, of course, is that major record companies no longer see themselves as such. Instead they are increasingly viewing themselves as entertainment companies in a global marketplace. The new goal of these companies is to exploit their artist/stars on a global scale and create "synergies" (i.e. powerful alliances) across other "divisions" within the parent Corporation. Ideally they want stars who can sing a song, star in a video, perform on stage, act in a movie, write a book, schmooze with TV culture and, if at all possible, develop clothing, perfume and food-product lines as well. This desire to create and own as many parts of the entertainment food chain as possible is radically transforming the music industry as we've known it. Add to this the relentless push of new media technologies and ways of distributing information (read: music) and you've got a formula for acute disruption and short-term chaos. The Global Jukebox is an insightful snapshot of this ever-shifting landscape. It will give you the "lay of the land" and, perhaps, some creative paths through it. 2) Anyone attempting to create a career in the music business finds out early that the industry is multi-faceted and fairly complex. Trying to dicipher, for example, the relationship of record sales to publishing revenue, agents to managers, and distribution to retail can make the novice's brain hurt. A second Big Picture book that eases this education is Star Tracks: Principles for Success in the Music and Entertainment Business by Larry Wacholtz (1996, Thumbs Up Publishing, Nashville; $21.95), a blow-by-blow of how the major label recording industry works today. After a brief summary chapter on the variety of industry components (players, publishers, producers labels, managers, etc.), Wacholtz launches into chapter after chapter of topics ranging from copyrights to music business economics, the songwriting craft to creating a successful music business career. He helps the reader navigate through the industry tangle with informative charts and illuminating diagrams, serving up hard-to-find information that turns "data" into useful knowledge. Mini-dictionaries for key industry terms and "Sage Windows" consisting of interviews with successful music insiders, add lots of extra value to the book. 3) The times are bright for independent music releases. While publications like Billboard & Variety bemoan the current decline of core industry revenue, peripheral music ventures are discovering profitable niches of music fandom: Epitaph, Interscope, Trauma, Ellipsis Arts, Touch & Go, and Green Linnet are just a small handful of successful indies that are grabbing market share from the majors. Each indie developed outside the core, usually by someone with a fervent love for a particular music. Behind each recording from these labels you'll find a well-thought-out release plan that includes everything from track selection to choice of font for the liner notes, from media awareness campaigns to strategies for working retail. Few books address these very real requirements for releasing a record today. Tim Sweeney's Guide to Releasing Independent Records by Tim Sweeney and Mark Geller (1996, TSA Books, 21213-B Hawthorne Blvd., Ste. 5255, Torrance, CA 90503; 310/542-6430; $24.95) covers these and goes way beyond to cover other crucial topics for indies including, the meaning and use of Soundscan, the different levels of "hit success", who the real players are in the music trade press, tips for evaluating your promotional plan, and other "insider' knowledge. Though focused primarily on rock and alternative approaches, this Guide will give anyone releasing a record a powerful blueprint for success. Good Free Resource: The RIAA Annual Report (published every Spring around April 1). The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade organization for all major labels and a number of larger indies. They tally all recorded music sales for the previous year (actually they tally about 80% since a lot of music gets sold outside the RIAA's own monitoring) and then break out the data into useful charts showing sales by genre, outlet, age group, etc. They are also the folks who certify a record's platinum or gold status. You can obtain your very own free Report by calling the RIAA in Washington D.C. at 202-775-0101.
About the Publisher PETER SPELLMAN is Director of MUSIC BUSINESS SOLUTIONS, a business and marketing consultancy to the music industry, and Director of Career Development at Berklee College of Music, Boston. He is the author of several books for music entrepreneurs and teaches music industry courses at Northeastern University (Boston) and the University of Massachusetts (Lowell). A musician since he was ten, Peter continues to spin riddims in the improvisational collective, Friend Planet and sing Cat Stevens' songs to his kids every night before bed. BLOOM WHERE YOU'RE PLANTED! E-mail: success@mbsolutions.com © 1997 - 2003, Peter Spellman, Music Business Solutions P.O. Box 230266, Boston MA 02123-0266 978-887-8041 Rise up!
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