FiV Music Business Services is founded and run by me, Hubert Sawyers III. I am a Digital Media Enthusiast, who after many forays into Music Making, Music Production and Music Marketing found a need for an objective long-term Music Industry Marketing resource. Whether you are a new artist, an up-and-coming producer or you've been around for years and are adjusting to the new ways that music-heads find artists, I would like to help you manage your music business affairs better.
We plan to talk about building a music economy in Detroit and how the real-time web can help build it. Here are the general touch points that we plan to discuss.
Rethinking The Approach: The Musician as a Creative Entrepreneur
Establishing the Value Proposition of the Local Musician
The event should be streamed live and we are tentatively-scheduled to go out around 2:30pm. Stay tuned to the #140conf feed for the live-stream link.
What do you think of the topic we plan to cover? Do you have any suggestion for anything specific that you don’t see here that we need to discuss? Let me know in the comments.
Over Labor Day Weekend, the great Midwestern city of Chicago will host the North Coast Music Festival (NCMF). This particular festival will have performances by The Chemical Brothers, Nas and Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley, Boys Noize and De La Soul, as well as FryinginVein.com favorites Phantogram and Mayer Hawthorne & the County.
To promote the music festival, NCMF is hosting a contest for one (1) band and one (1) DJ to get the opportunity to play a 45-minute set at the festival. They are pushing for crowd participation to pick the best of the pack. The entries are in and the voting has commenced. Obviously, we like to share our taste and our pick is the hip hop group – CROWN NATION. Crown Nation is a duo from out of Detroit. The members are FryinginVein.com notable Quelle and Denmark Vessey; both of whom are vocalists and music producers.
Help us get Crown Nation to the top 10 to get a chance to advance. You can vote ONCE A DAY until August 15th. Here’s the details right from NCMF:
Voting Between August 2nd and August 15th, vote once per day, every day, if you want to make a life-changing difference in the life of one band and one DJ. Each e-mail address will be allotted one vote per day, so encourage your supporters to vote early and often!
The Decision On August 15th, the votes will be tallied and North Coast Music Festival organizers will choose 10 Finalists out of the Top 20 Vote-Getters. These finalists will play a private show for organizers and their guests at a yet-to-be-disclosed location. Wow us, and you’ll be one of two winners. We’ll pick 1 Band and 1 DJ to join the main stages for a 45-minute set. He, Her, or They will be showered with praise and good fortune.
We have talked about merchandise in our Masters of Content series. If you read the posts and felt defeated, then mope no more! We were on Hypebot the other day and learned about Merchluv, which is where “artists inspire artists.” Sounds like utopia, doesn’t it? This is an interesting model - crowd-sourced merchandise. Imagine the possibilities.
Here’s a summary of how the service works where band meets arts-and-crafts and then get married and/or do business (however you want to see it):
Musicians just upload their logos, photos, etc. Then designers buy a license for 99¢ to make an original merch sample and post their creation on Mechluv. If it sells, the designer ships directly to the fan and band gets 20% of the sale. Bands can also negotiate to purchase higher quantities of an item to sell directly to their fans.
The lovely backdrop on this site was provided by graphic designer Andrea Williams of &rea Designs of Detroit, MI. She is accepting inquiries, including music-related work.
On Wednesday, October 20th, I will have the distinct privilege of moderating a panel at the 140 Characters Conference in Detroit. The panel will include Martin “DJ Graffiti” Smith – VP of Marketing at A-Side Worldwide, Dominic Arellano – Founder of the Few Records, and Jason Gittinger – Executive Producer of The Detroit School of Rock and Pop Music.
