On Being An Entrepreneur – Ariel Hyatt Interviews Derek Sivers
Being Derek Sivers’ best friend is a blessing. He’s my friend who: Helped me create Cyber PR® In fact the design of the Cyber PR® campaigns and software were his idea. Always cheers me up and talks me through whenever I think that I can’t do something Is the first call on my birthday This list can go on for pages but I will stop here and say Congratulations Derek on your new book! "Anything You Want - 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur" And speaking of Entrepreneur, I interviewed him in depth on just this subject… It’s long but it is a wonderful deep dive into all things Derek… Enjoy! See the book announcement here: http://sivers.org/ayw And the book page here: http://sivers.org/a Ariel Hyatt & Derek Sivers... On Being An Entrepreneur Derek Sivers. Derek founded CD Baby in 1997, and he invented what today is the distribution paradigm model for all independent musicians. Before CD Baby there was no way for independent musicians to get distribution without a record deal. Derek left CD Baby in 2008 to start a new business to help musicians called MuckWork. He had reached a point where he felt like CD Baby could function without him and he had this new idea that he could not hold at bay. Derek often speaks to musicians about the state of the music business, and how to sell and market themselves. This is a rare interview because it shows Derek’s business-owner side and it addresses thoughts for people who want to get into the business and not musicians. Entrepreneurs are by definition problem solvers and Derek had a double-sided good fortune. As a musician he was frustrated by the fact that he could not get distribution for his own CDs. Because of personal experience, he identified a few major problems and he solved them with CD Baby. Problem #1: Musicians could not get distributed anywhere unless they were signed. He solved this issue it by providing artists with an online distribution channel that allowed artists to accept credit cards Problem #2: Distributors were only paying their artists 2-4 times a year and holding up valuable capital that was necessary for artists to use to self-fund their own development. Derek created a system that paid artists once a week no matter how many or how fee CDs they had sold which was revolutionary for artists who were not used to getting paid so regularly and fast. Problem #3: Musicians are inherently lazy. Read More READ MOREReview of Ariel Hyatt's Music Success in Nine Weeks by Carla Lynne Hall – Know The Music Biz
Originally posted here: http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com/index.php/BIZ-BLOG/BIZ-BLOG/Review-of-Ariel-Hyatt-s-Music-Success-in-Nine-Weeks-by-Carla-Lynne-Hall.html Carla Lynne Hall is a singer, guitarist, and music marketing consultant based in New York City. Her mission is to make music, and share her knowledge with other musicians. As a singer/songwriter, her musical style has been described as "Norah Jones meets Sade for tea on their way to visit The Beatles". For almost twenty years, she has toured the globe as a singer/songwriter, and professional vocalist. Carla has has spent a number of years behind the scenes in the music industry, in music publishing, management, publicity, and radio promotion. She is the author of The DIY Guide to the Music Biz and Twitter for Musicians. Carla also writes a monthly newsletter, The Soulflower . To be an indie musician requires an entrepreneurial mindset, and the latest edition of Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks promises to “supercharge your PR, build your fanbase and earn more money”. As that may sound like a fabulous claim, many indie musicians may wonder if the book can live up to its promise. In my own career as an indie musician, I have learned to be mindful of my business goals. To stay on the top of my game, I read A LOT of books on the music business. While some music biz books are filled with contract mumbo jumbo that require translation, others are total fluff, offering pie-in-the-sky promises that don’t show the reader how to get results. Thankfully, Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks teaches actual strategies that can be put into use immediately. As the founder of Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR, Ms. Hyatt could easily have written a thinly-veiled promotion piece for her music publicity services. Instead, her book is an easy-to follow nine-week program that teaches musicians how to promote themselves, without any self-promotion hype. Read More READ MORE
The Indie Maximum Exposure List (A Guide For The Rest Of Us)
My phone rang last week and it was Tom Silverman from Tommy Boy calling to discuss my panel for his upcoming Chicago New Music Seminar. Tom was half amused and half disgusted. "Have you seen Billboard this week?" He asked. Since Billboard is a publication I largely ignore, I fessed up: "No. Why?" "You have to see this article," he said. "It's the most ridiculous thing ever." In a few moments, I was reading it and I was laughing out loud. Here are a few excerpts: From the September 26 edition of Billboard: BILLBOARD'S 2009 MAXIMUM EXPOSURE LIST "Today the ways artists can promote their music have proliferated so rapidly that it can be hard to keep up with what's new -- what's actually cutting through the clutter. It's in this context that Billboard decided to geek out with 25 promotions and publicity experts across genres and mediums to create the ultimate multimedia metric: Our first Maximum Exposure List." I sampled a few random ones from the 2009 list to give you a sense: Read More READ MORE
