Like almost every aspect of Facebook, there is no financial cost to adding a Facebook Group. So if you have a few minutes, why not create a group for your band?

Why do you need a Facebook Group?

Your personal manager, touring manager, or just the band member in charge of booking shows needs to know when members are available and to keep everyone in the loop. There are lots of tools out there for getting a band organized including BandCentral, Indie Band Manager, Manymoon and Google Docs. But there are two big drawbacks, most have a monthly cost, and even the free ones require everyone in the band to register and use the program.

Managing your band with Facebook Groups is far from perfect, but it’s likely everyone in your band uses Facebook daily. In fact, every person, band and venue your band interacts with probably uses Facebook.

Treat your band like a business.

The biggest peace of advice I hear from industry professionals and successful bands is “treat your band like a business.” What does that mean? Well, it means  get organized. You have a lot of people, money and time to manage. Creating a Facebook Group for your band allows everyone in the band to stay connected, and give their opinion on what is happening.

How to use Facebook Groups.

When you click on your group from the left-hand navigation, you will be able to see what is going on in your group just like your personal friend feed. Within the group there are two categories to help you get your band organized; Event and Doc. You should create a document for all of the bands contacts, financial situation and goals, and you should put all of the upcoming shows and street team events in here as well.

The one other advantage of Facebook Groups is that it allows the band to communicate in a way in which everyone is familiar. Take advantage of a tool that everyone uses for keeping up with friends, and turn it into a tool to make your band better.

More info on the changes to Facebook Groups.

As a musician resources geek, I’m always a little giddy when I find an incredibly useful site for musicians. My favorites are Hypebot, Music Think Tank and The Savvy Musician’s blog, among others. So I was really excited to stumble upon MusicMoz. This volunteer-supported website is a directory of thousands of music websites.

MusicMoz creates pages of links on specific music categories. MusicMoz’s format is similar to Wikipedia and the Open Directory Project in that the pages are managed by volunteer editors. Much of MusicMoz is for fans of music, with categories on specific bands, genres and lyrics. But the real meat is in its resources for aspiring musicians.

Unsigned Band Resources was the first category I was drawn to. This category, alone, has 195 links to websites. And the directory is always growing. I noticed detone8.com is not listed yet, so I know of at least one more site I hope will be added.

MusicMoz’s site structure divides topics into smaller, more specific categories, until you can find a manageable list. For instance, there is a list of agents and managers that cater to folk musicians.

Not knowing about this resource-heavy site sooner has me calling my music geek cred into question.

The only real drawback I see is the directory could use more volunteers. Some categories, like Clubs and Venues in the United States, have very few links and no editor. But because it is a volunteer maintained site, anyone can pitch in and help add links. MusicMoz is doing its part to educate on the music industry and simultaneously giving you the ability to help improve it.

Getting your music on iTunes, and other digital music outlets, is no longer just a good idea but something your band must do to generate an income.  Unfortunately, many music outlets do not work with individual artists. iTunes is no exception.  This means that you will have to work with a digital distributor to get your music out there. Here at Detone8.com we’ve put together a list of companies that distribute independent music. This alphabetical list gives the differences between theses companies to help you find the one that fits you the best.

Avatar:

• Avatar has an application process, and it is not guaranteed they will take your music.
• If accepted, your music should be available on iTunes within 3-4 weeks after you submit all the required items (contracts, CDs, W9, etc.)
• Avatar does not charge a set up fee, but will keep 20% of earnings as their distribution fee.
• Payments will be made 45 days after the end of each quarter (mid May, Aug, Nov, Feb)
• Better Business Bureau: No Rating, no complaints.

Catapult:

• Catapult offers self sign up, and includes multiple stores in their distribution agreement including iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Zune.
• Expect a 4-8 week time frame from the time you submit your music, to the time it will be available for download (varies by store)
• Catapult charges a $25 setup fee, and has a tiered distribution fee starting at 9% and scales down to 5% as downloads increase.
• Catapult does not require a physical CD, so you can start the process while your music is off to the replicator, or you can choose to scrap CD replication altogether.
• Payments are made once a month via Paypal.
• Better Business Bureau: A Rating, no complaints.

CD Baby:

• CD Baby is also a self sign up service, and includes over 20 stores in the agreement.
• Expect your music to start showing up in the different stores after 3 weeks.
• CD Baby charges a $35 set up fee, with a distribution fee of 9%.
• CD Baby issues payments the Monday after they received the sales reports from iTunes, Amazon, etc.
• CD Baby also has a physical distribution offering that includes Amazon (which is required if you plan on submitting to Pandora).
• Better Business Bureau: A- Rating, BBB processed a total of 18 complaints about C D Baby Inc in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 18 complaints closed in 36 months, 14 were closed in the last year.

The Orchard:

• The Orchard has an application and approval process.
• The Orchard distributes through iTunes, Verizon, Amazon MP3, Zune, and many more.
• Better Business Bureau: No Rating, no complaints.

QuickStar Productions:

• Quickstar also has an application and approval process.
• Quickstar distributes through iTunes, Amazon MP3, Napster, and “almost every other mp3 retailer on the world.”
• Better Business Bureau: A Rating, no complaints.

TuneCore:

• TuneCore is completely self service and includes 19 different stores (iTunes, Amazone MP3, eMusic, etc.)
• TuneCore does not retain anything as distribution fee, however, it does have 3 different setup fees depending on single, album (standard), or album “a la carte” distribution.
• Better Business Bureau: No Rating, BBB processed a total of 2 complaint(s) about this business in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total 2 complaint(s) closed in the last 36 months, 0 were closed in the last 12 months.

**All the distribution fees are based on earnings after the retailer fees.

Good Luck!

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Musicians don’t gets performance royalties for music played on the radio, so performance royalties from SoundExchange must be a scam. It’s a logical train of thought, and it’s completely false.

SoundExchange is legit and has money waiting for musicians.

Fifteen years ago the U.S. Congress started changing the laws to create performance royalties for artist. Now, in some situations, not only do the people that write and own songs get royalties, but so do all the individuals involved in the recording of a song.

For over 80 years American radio stations have convinced musicians that radio does not have to pay performance royalties. They found a loophole, and they have made sure to keep it a loophole. Yet, it’s not the same story around the world. In many countries artist do get performance royalties.

Lately things have gotten better in the U.S. You, and your copy write holder, can now collect performance royalties for digital performances. This would be when music is played on satellite or Internet radio. The non-profit company SoundExchange was created to handle the payments music providers would pay to musicians from government licenses. There has been hundreds of millions of dollars collected on musicians’ behalf.

The only problem is that the concept of performance royalties is so unknown in the U.S. that many artist don’t collect the money they are due. It’s why soundExchange is holding more than $10 million dollars in royalties for musicians who they have contacted six times or more. It’s why SoundExchange has sent out 14,000 checks to artists, yet these artist have never cashed the checks.

Musicians are afraid it’s a scam. But the money is legit. SoundExchange has collected over $350 million dollars in performance royalties. Now you need to collect it.

It’s not too complicated, at it is never too late. SoundExchange has royalty payments that date back to 1996.

To start with, you need to go to SoundExchange.com or their registration site. The money is taxable. Don’t forget that Congress created this, so you will need to fill out tax forms. If you are in a band, this is a great reason to turn the band into a small business. You will be able to keep all the money together, and not have to register each member individually. (Also, turning your band into a small business has lots of other advantages and is fairly common among successful bands Detone8.com has interviewed.)

You will need a bank account that they can deposit the money into. You can wait for them to send you a check., but direct deposit is much faster.

The form mostly keeps track of where you live, what music you are involved in and how to pay you. They do have a large, 42 person staff that would be happy to help you figure everything out. You can e-mail them, or even call them during normal business hours. But even with all these people trying to give money to musicians, not all of the money can be given to the rightful owners.

Bryan Calhoun, Vice President of New Media at SoundExchange, warns why you need to properly fill out submissions to SoundExchange and digital music providers like Pandora.

Digital music providers have to submit their play lists to SoundExchange, so the proper artists get paid. But because these providers can only share information that was submitted to them, some musicians will never get paid. Why? Because someone filled out the form as BAND UNKNOWN or DEMO. Calhoun said that SoundExchange has a lot of money for BAND UNKNOWN.

With all this money SoundExchange is trying to give away you would think they would have their hands full. Yet, they are fighting hard to get even more money. If digital performance royalties are bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, what SoundExchange and the Music First Coalition are working on could dramatically change the music industry. They are trying to close the loophole broadcast radio uses to not pay performance royalties.

How much money could be paid to artist is hard to imagine. The scale is huge. Just one example is that France does pay musicians performance royalties for songs played on the radio. But because U.S. radio stations do not pay French musicians performance royalties, French radio stations do not pay U.S. musicians performance royalties. Calhoun believes that U.S. artist should received more than $100 million in performance royalties from foreign radio stations alone.

Musicians deserve to be paid for their work, and SoundExchange is one more way to get paid.

Performance royalties quick tips

• Create a bank account for music revenue.

• Make sure your information is correct when registering for XM, SIRIUS, Pandora and any other digital music provider.

• Register with Soundexchange.

image by markhillary

Writing is difficult, and writing quality lyrics can seem impossible. Yet the biggest obstacle is not that you can’t write, but how you approach writing. Forget all that nonsense you learned in freshman English class that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the world.

If you want to write the songs people will love, you need follow the rules of great writing today. But first you have to shake some misconceptions about good writing.

1.) Good writers are born good writers.

Contrary to popular belief, great writers are not born good at their craft. Great writers are created with hard work. No one expects a guitar player to be great as soon as they start, so don’t expect your writing to be strong until you have practiced, practiced and practiced some more.

2.) Great writing is complex.

Bullshit. The best writing is the most direct writing, and direct writing is when the way you speak and the way you write are nearly indistinguishable. Shakespeare is the greatest author in history because his writing could connect with people like no one else. But that is history. We don’t talk like that anymore.

Now that  your head is clear, you need to start filling it with what you really need to know. The first step to being a better song writer is to read good writing.

No one is better at teaching American English writing than William Zinsser. His book “On Writing Well” should be owned by every song writer. Fittingly, the best description of the book comes from Zinsser.

“The life-changing message of On Writing Well: simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.” -William Zinsser

So what are you doing reading this article? Get to work. Write the next great song.

BONUS:A few writing tips I learned as a journalist.

• Keep to one topic – If a song is about your friend Pete, don’t write about your dog, your job or your car. If you don’t have enough to say about Pete you should pick a new topic.

• Seek honest feedback – There will always be people who will cut you down, and there will always be someone who can’t say anything bad. These people are useless. Ask people who will be honest with you to review your songs.

• Put it out there – Sometimes your writing will seem pure genius, and no one will notice. Sometimes you will knock a piece out in 10 minutes and it will be the next big hit. You’ll never know if you don’t put it out there.

Michael Zapruder, music curator for Pandora, faces an onslaught of 400 to 800 songs every month. Yet even with a never ending supply of new music, Zapruder and his staff don’t cut any corners. Every song submitted to Pandora is analyzed by the experts at Pandora to be considered for inclusion in the collection.

“We are proud we listen to everything,” Zapruder said.

With over 40 million registered users, Pandora is not a market you want to miss out on. And, you should not. Submitting to Pandora is relatively easy, and all the steps you need to get on Pandora are steps you should be doing anyway.

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The steps to getting your music ready for submitting.

• First, you need to have a CD copy of your music with a bar code. When a recording studio agrees to record and replicate an album a bar code is often included in the fees. But watch out, it can cost as much as $99 to buy a bar code. Pandora recommends Nation Wide Barcode which charges only $10 for a bar code. You can get it the same day.

• Once your music has been reproduced into a CD format, Pandora requires that the music must be available in the physical Amazon CD store. You will need to create an account for Amazon Advantage, but there are no fees to join. It cost $29.95 per year plus a 55% standard commission on the sale of your CDs. Don’t forget to enter in all the information that Amazon lists about your music. Most importantly you need to upload the cover art for the album.

• Speaking of albums, no matter how awesome all the other songs on a CD might sound you need the rights to use every song on the album. Once Pandora accepts your music they may use all the songs on your CD.

• It is also suggested that before submitting you should collect relevant information about your fan base, selling power and music reviews. This will not help with the Music Genome Project, but it can be a good indicator to Pandora if people want to hear your music.

The simple submission process.

• Go to Pandora’s submit music form and give them all the information you have prepared. You will want to submit your best two songs from the CD you put on Amazon. Zapruder also suggests not putting in more than one submission until you know if your first CD has been approved or denied.

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You can check up on the status of your submissions, but be patient. Not only are there hundreds of submissions ahead of yours, the review process takes a long time. You just need to have the patience to wait as Pandora works their way through the songs ahead of yours. Zapruder said this process can take up to three months.

“We listen to the songs and if necessary and relevant we look up the supplemental information that the artist provided with their submission,” Zapruder said. “A decision is made on whether to accept the music or to pass on it, and that decision is added to the original submission.”

Once Pandora gets to accepts your submission, the Music Genome Project is used to analyze your songs. This process is a long list of music attributes that are rated by a group of music experts at Pandora. The rating process is extremely rigid so that all of the music analysts can give a consistent answer to questions like, “how distorted is this guitar?”

No matter what the genre, Zapruder is looking for quality music. Yet some of the more crowded genres, like four piece pop rock, can be difficult to get into. Also, some genres of music have yet to get their own genome, so Pandora would not be able to take any music of that genre regardless of quality.  Don’t worry. It is very unlikely you would run across this problem if you are writing any kind of music heard in clubs in the U.S.

Good luck, and don’t forget to check out our interview with Barefoot Truth. They have over 4 million plays on Pandora.

This is part one of a three part series on Pandora Radio. Part two is an interview with Pandora Chief Strategy Officer & Founder Tim Westergren. He talked with us about how Pandora works, the future of the music industry and his advice for young bands.

The third part of the Pandora Radio series is on promoting your band and making money on Pandora. According to Westergren, 70 percent of the music on Pandora is from artist not on major labels, and Pandora pays royalties for every time a song gets played on the site. Last year Pandora paid more than $20 million in royalties.

image by Mike Bairds

A great photo will define a band’s presence decades after it was taken. A bad photo will turn a band into a bad punchline overnight.

So, what makes a great band photo? Authenticity.

A great photo should not cost more money than a terrible photo, but it will cost your time and commitment.

The big don’t- Above all else, avoid the staged photo.

A photo shoot of the band pretending to play their instruments will look like a band pretending to play their instruments. Guess What? Most musicians are not trained models, and they are not working with high-end fashion photographers. If Playboy asks your band to fake play your guitar, do it. If your aunt asks you to do this, politely decline.

If your band is not full of models, the best solution is to take candid photos. Have someone take pictures of your band doing real things, with real emotions. To create candid photos with real emotions, your band and the photographer need to get out of the lets take some pictures mode to lets show our fans who we are as people. Take focus away from the act of being photographed, and turn it into a way to connect with fans.

Let’s go bowling- If a band wants to show a fun side or competitive side, mini golf, bowling and the basketball court can cover both motivations. These are also cheep locations that generally don’t mind if people are taking photos. If the band wants to mess around or play for the win it all works, as long as nothing is forced. If it does not feel right, don’t do it.

Let’s get serious- For some bands rounds of mini golf and bowling are not going to cut it. It’s time to get serious. Take the band to a sculpture park or a universities art department. It will not only be a good way to see the band’s reactions to pieces they love or hate, but the art will make for a strong background.
It’s also more than likely that some members of the band are creative in other ways. Take your photographer to watch members paint, sculpt, draw or do whatever they love outside of music.

Let’s go- If all else fails, take your photographer on the road. The most candid shots, and often the best, occur when a band and a photographer have spent too much time together, and no one really cares what they look like or what they are doing.

DIY Tip – You’re poor. We Know. It’s highly recommended to get a trained photographer, but if all else fails you can take your own photos. The big secret to great photography is to take lots and lots and lots of photos. Then take some more. Remember, a band can take a long time getting the right photo. In the long run it is easier to work hard to get the perfect photo, than to be consistently reminded of those terrible photos on your CD covers.

Once you have some photos the band really likes it is time to test the images. Don’t trust your own judgment, and don’t ask your mom’s opinion. Put the images on photo critique sites like flickr or professional music photographers like Zack Arias. It’s better to have someone pick your photos apart now, then after you put them on 10,000 fliers.

For more tips on taking band photos, and other rookie band tips read these articles to help your band.

image by Vanilla Twilight

Jet Lag Gemini has no gimmicks to success. There are no tricks up their sleeves. The band makes music, and they do it very well. The dedication to their music is the reason Doghouse Records put Jet Lag Gemini on their label and set up tours with bands like The All-American Rejects. It’s also the reason the band has spent a year writing their current album.

“Write good music,” Misha Safonov, lead singer of Jet Lag Gemini, said. “People pick up on it.”

Yet even with a unique sound, Jet Lag Gemini had to work to get fans. The scene in New Jersey, at the time the band was created, was ruled by screamo bands emulating Thursday. Jet Lag Gemini was the only band in the area with a cleaner rock sound. Safonov said that people though the band was weird. But, it never detoured them.

They set out to be a touring band from day one. As soon as the band was formed they booked to play their first show only three weeks later. They didn’t even have all of their songs written. There was no MySpace push or crazy contests. It was an old school approach to making it in the music industry, playing as many shows as possible, and focus on the music first.

As Jet Lag Gemini played more shows and started setting up tours, the screamo scene got old. People were looking for something different. As the scene moved onto AutoTunes and the latest hipster look more people begin to notice Jet Lag Gemini’s unique sound and dedication to their music.

“It’s word of mouth,” Safonov said. “People see us live and there is a steady growth.”

The band started to tour and trade shows with other bands. They learned to become economical and not drive to Florida before anyone knows who they are.

People took notice. The band formed around 2004 and by 2006 Doghouse Records learned about their music and offered them a deal.

Yet there is more to Jet Lag Gemini’s success than good music, it is a good attitude. Along the way they have tried to stay humble, learning to not be like the bands that act like they are owed success.

“Some bands think that just because they left town and are on tour that they are a big deal,” Safonov said. “Sure, you want to have mystery, but you don’t want to come off as a dick.”

The success Jet Lag Gemini has tasted has not consumed them, but pushed them to be even better. After two albums, Jet Lag Gemini spent the entire year writing for their latest album. Even before stepping into a studio, and working with their producer, the band has taken time to write and record all the songs for the album, so they can give their producer the best idea of how they want the album to sound.

With the amount of time Jet Lag Gemini has spent on the latest album, they will go over two years without releasing anything new. It’s not been easy for the band. Safonov has had to earn extra money on the side to help pay his bills. Yet, they are doing it they way they want.

“There is no easy way to make it.” Safonov said. “There are a million different ways to make it, but non of them are easy.”

Franz Ferdinand gives some times about lyric writing to young fans at a writing event.

image by dearbarbie