To Pay Or Not to Pay

“Should you pay to Perform”

What’s up everybody I have not written in a while but, I have a few new articles and advice I want to share answering a few questions you may have in the process. This includes to Pay or not to Pay referring to an Artist, Company, Talent or any other entity. I would suggest that making the decision to either pay to play or not pay will be a situational decision. For example if you are an upcoming artist and you are looking to get on a show and perform paying is usually your only option at your starting point. I am a believer that at some point you as the artist should graduate to being the one to get paid to perform but, that responsibility almost will fall directly on you as an artist. Why? Because it is up to the artist to put in work and build a DEMAND for his/her name and Brand. Just like with any other brand or business you may have to pay for certain entry fees and access areas to begin with and as you work to develop your business’s brand you will find that you will no longer need to put forth that money for those same and even greater points of entry. I have seen great debates over should an artist have to pay to perform and should a promoter charge an artist to perform. Usually in every case I find that Promoters never present the right argument or “defense” (because they are usually on the defense) and end up looking like the bad guy (which some are… but, that will be discussed in a later article), or Artist make weak arguments of why they should be paid. Example an Artist that has NO physical copies of his latest release, NO fully original material, No fan base, and nothing in the streets with NO performance history complaining about paying to perform is a bad argument. New Orleans is usually late on the business side of things and formatted changes which can cause most of these seemingly no brainer issues that should not be issues. When it comes down to it, If you are in a situation where you are benefiting a promoter you have a thing called demand. If you have yet, to create demand than pay. Simple. These principles can extend to Magazine/Site features, Album Features, and so on. Feel free to respond and stay tuned for more.

MightyJoe504

MightyMuzik™.com

Hey guys and gals out there I wanted to touch on a few basic fundamentals of Marketing and Promotion that I think will help redirect your efforts and you should begin to see real results and save some time. First let me start off by saying get your PROMO GUNS ready! lol <=== yes I just wrote lol and made an arrow out of characters. Which maybe a few years ago would be very unprofessional and maybe still is in many circles but, as you will learn for me it is marketing. I aim to have all my writings as free flowing as possible and to add to that insert as much emotion as possible because if you met me you can clearly see I am down to earth. Now back to the topic at hand which happens to be Marketing and Promotion. Now the reason I am referring you to have your Promo Gun ready is because I will be attempting to show you how directly related Promotion and Marketing are. An unskilled Promo Gun holder would get into the cluttered arena we call the Social Network (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare) and just start firing off Promo Rounds and hope they hit somebody. Well what I am here to say is, “That will definitely show that your either new to this or you really are lost and have yet to gain the art that comes with Promotion”. Anybody can’t promote and call themselves promoters but, the people who will maintain themselves at the top will be the effective ones. This is where marketing comes into play. Save your ammo and only shoot promo at customer you have a high potential at hitting! Common sense right? well not so much because while that seems logical we rarely see this put into practice. I see a lot of people who throw promotional material on peoples pages they never talk to “NO-NO”, people who do the same thing they do “NO-NO” or put a large volume of clutter in clutter “NO-NO”. You have to realize that as the web becomes more populated so does the fight for that audience. Narrowing down a potential client, customer, or supporter is key to surviving the clutter. Facebook has a great feature in that you can check out a person “Info” tab and see if they will be a potential client of yours. We should all know that Promotion is about “Conversion”. If you are not promoting to convert someone to do something or become something, Why Promo? Exactly so put your long hours of online work to use in more beneficial ways. Instead of copy/pasting the same note on 40 people’s page hoping one hits on it. Take that time it would have took you to do all that to read their info and select the ones that fit as a possible client, customer, supporter. These are meant to be quick reference writings so I will not drag this out but, MAKE SURE you are using Marketing to aim your Promo Gun before you shoot next time! Hope this helps.

- Joshua “MightyJoe504″ Slack Jr

As time goes on and the longer I am involved in any field whether that be music or business and even as far as life in general I find that the “Crab mentality” will be of some focus at some point of discussion usually brought up in conversations that call non-success into question or short comings.  Coming from New Orleans I find this has become some kind of scape goat in a sense and I project that the perception has become what is being presented as truth when in all reality it is not a proven fact. Why do I say this? For many reasons yet, a few to name would be the mass of people that use the excuse. If there are so many people claiming that this is going on either one of two things are happening: (1) Crabs are calling out Crabs or (2) Its not as prominent as it is being presented and people are simply just representing second hand knowledge or speaking for the mass in a general sense creating what still is an untrue perception. To further explain number one, I get 100 people to tell me “we can’t make it because it’s a Crab bucket here”, which makes me think well if 100 people are complaining about this problem why haven’t none of the 100 ever come together or worked to counteract this complaint? Or more importantly if there are “Crabs” that think differently why are they not where those crabs are at so they can make their escape so to speak? On the other hand I question just how much could this mentality stop what your doing when in todays time we have been blessed with several means of connecting with people who don’t suffer from “Crab mentality”? I often wonder did they take your internet connection? Your transportation? Your ability to buy copies of your product? Your main concern would be interacting with you targeted audience and getting them material and FaceTime with you. Envy, Sabotage, and competition has been around forever and people have over come them so I don’t see why this aspect has to be any different. I’m sure that you can look back at several things that could have been done, that were not done, by somebody who never made it and explain the cause of not getting to their desired position well before you let the blame fall on “Crab mentality”.

“Target Your Market… Stop wasting your Time”

Whats Up NOLA? From my previous post I want to extent on the targeting market aspect to give you all an idea of just how valuable this is. The best example that I could come up with off the top of my head happens to be this scenario: If I gave you one 4×6 flyer with your music info on it, to put anywhere in a Bestbuy store, where would you put it. Same rules apply when you tweet, update a Facebook status, DM, inbox, whatever. I can’t stress enough just how this is a parallel to great placement. From my Bestbuy flyer placement example, we can quickly find the places in the store you wouldn’t put the flyer. If I’m a rapper I would put it in the Mobile dept, by Geek Squad counter, Or by the Xbox360′s… Common sense right? yet, I see people adding and tweeting people that could care less about you or your music. Ok, there will be some people that will say put the flyer in the music section. True? Somewhat. But, when you have the ability to narrow down your market into specifics you take advantage of the chance. So as a rapper you want to be in the rap section but, you don’t want to stop there you want to be where you are most likely to be followed. Whether that be in the local rap music section or putting it in an area of an artist that fall under the “If you liked this artist you will love me” section. Remember when you shop anywhere they will post things such as “We noticed you like this… well we recommend you that based of what you liked”. Again I don’t want to make these series to long and wordy hopefully you get the example and STOP WASTING YOUR TIME!!! Target your market.

“Stop Spamming…. Start Promoting”

I have been noticing a lot of people getting the idea that promotion is a copying and paste type deal of the same post on people’s wall who most you never talk to, flooding everyones time-line (on Facebook) or @ replying everyone the same copied message. Why? Well first I would like to say thats not promotion and if you want to argue semantics then fine, it’s not good nor effective promotion which, leads me to think if its not good nor effective why do it? If you fall into this category there is hope for you! You just need to immediately stop and follow a few simple tips. I like to use boxers as an example in this case. You can come out the corner swinging for the fences but, it says a lot about you. One; you are in desperation mode, or Two; you have no discipline. It takes either a freakish mistake by your opponent or a very unskilled opponent to become victim to those tactics. As this relates to us keep in mind that the audience of today is “ON YOU”. They are not new to this and via social media if the are not to savvy at first someone will expose you and then they will know so, that said you can rule out having a weak opponent. Either way your audience will sense those two aspects if your just going out @replying 10,000 tweets of your link i.e. Throwing wild punches hoping one lands. News flash a skilled audience will just pick you apart and maybe have fun doing it. Moral of the story move from what you thought was promotion to doing real promotion which includes Targeted marketing which I will expand upon in the next post. Until then, STOP SPAMMING!

“What is your true reach”
MightyJoe504 for MightyMuzik™ Magazine
Follow me on twitter: @JSLACKJR

After surviving the myspace crash and staying a float in the Facebook and twitter era I found out one thing that many people have fail to realize the importance of and that is “TRUE FOLLOWSHIP”. Yes, true follow-ship. What I mean by that is who really is following your brand, product, or you as a person… Who cares if you have 5000 friends on Facebook if none of them is trying to hear what you are talking about. Same rules apply when I see people who have 20,000 mixture download on certain sites but, you can’t find more than 2 people that ever talk about their music… My point is don’t get caught up in numbers because in the end it’s about who really supports your cause and will identify with your brand and product. The average person understands that they are now important which makes its much harder than before to keep supporters you never talk to or interact with. Remember to focus on your true reach and watch how more accurate marketing yourself will become.

“Surviving Harsh Critics”

Mix that fact with the current way of communication is the “free world” of the internet and social media we find that the once thin line no longer exists. Talent is one thing but, you need to build an understanding toward handling obstacles such as bad critics to began to thrive in the market. With an added curve ball (which will always live up the the cliche’) your in New Orleans, where no matter how you look at it or try to spin things, Something will always be slightly different about how you are to address things. We find that many entertainers and talent people loose their will or fold in the face of critics. Nobody will always like everything you do and when you come to that realization you will do far better. Don’t discredit someones opinion because it doesn’t line up with your outlook. Someone could quite possibly be giving you constructive criticism that could rocket your career into places you could only imagine. Find what they didn’t like about that song, your style, your performance and weight it into consideration. In no way are we saying change yourself for them yet, if they make valid points that could really help you out embrace the help. If nothing else you didn’t have to pay anything, you got FREE advice…

The How-To w/ MightyMuzik™ Magazine

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“Death to selling Ringtones”

If you are planning to succeed you know you have to keep up with technology and as we all know technology seems to change over night. A few years ago riding the wave of the “Ringtone” market was the way to go as reaching consumers and building relationships with them became more of a part of the entertainers responsibility if you wanted to keep up with the major stars. While social media has made the indie entertainer capable of reaching the masses in a way they couldn’t just years back it also has done away with the Ringtone. Ringtones are still relevant just not as a way to make money for an entertainer. Between Apps and new phone markets consumers no longer need to purchase ringtones or text numbers to get your ringtone. Keep in touch with your targeted audience is primarily done through social networking as of 2011. That being said we are in a moving society where most people are operating from there phones and can virtually do just about anything from it including keep up with your latest activity. Giving your audience a peek into your life will bring you more loyal fans and supporters than you could imagine. Time to stop trying to sell ringtones and $1 downloads and get in touch with the people that are following you which if done right will make the clasp of the ringtone market become irrelevant to your cause.

The HOW-TO w/ MightyMuzik ™ – Bringing the knowledge to the Talent

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Gambit Weekly

3923 Bienville St. New Orleans, LA 70119 Tel: (504) 486-5900 Fax: (504) 483-3116 response@ gambitweekly. com Pub.: Margo Dubos; Ed.: Clancy Duboos; A&E Ed.: Will Covieloo Free weekly. www.bestofneworleans. com

OffBeat / Lousiana Music Directory

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Nat’lly distributed music monthly (free locally) offers complete club listings, in- terviews, massive record re- views & coverage of bands on tour through the area. www.offbeat.com
Real New Orleans Music Mayor’s Office of Economic Development

1340 Poydras St., 10th Fl.
New Orleans, LA 70112 Tel: (504) 658-0923 Contact: Ernest Collins City of New Orleans sup- ports & promotes its local artists via its “Tune Up!” music newsletter & XM Sat- ellite Radio program “French Quarter Friday Nights”.
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