Surviving a recession as a musician....

Kanon Kulpa recently published a post on Branding During a Recession. After discussions with fellow musicians, I’ve been thinking about how musicians are impacted by an economic slowdown.

As prices rise and incomes are stretched, entertainment is one of the early casualties of cutbacks. As Kanon mentioned in his article, people do not necessarily eliminate entertainment, they tend to look for lower cost alternatives. For example, it is a lot less expensive to grab a 12-pack and have a house party than hit the clubs.

For entertainers and venue owners, this can be a problem. As bar revenue decreases, owners and managers are forced to look at their expenditures and ask the question: Does providing music continue to generate revenue, or is it an expense that can be cut?

Obviously, there are many venue types out there; some are 100% dependent on music, others fall into an area where music is optional because they have other streams of income including food service, juke boxes and dare I say it…karaoke. Not all clubs will survive, others will thrive.

Among fellow musicians, we’ve discussed the following issues:

Clubs asking for musicians to take a cut on their rate
It is important to ask yourself: Do you have a good relationship with the club owner? Will the rate go up once things get better? Will a temporary rate cut lead to long term bookings? Remember, you have to balance your expenses (gas, strings, etc) and make an practical decision.

Reducing travel
With rising gas prices, many musicians are reducing their travel distance or asking for more money to travel further. This is a tightrope issue; if clubs are cutting back and you are asking for more money, will you loose the gig? On the other hand, this may be an excellent to and expand your market by expanding your territory.

Cancellations
Some bands are finding that their gigs are simply canceled due to the economic strain on venues. This situation is difficult for the club, the band and the fans who may have been planning on attending the show.

Promoting Yourself
If you continue to bring in fans and generate income for the venue, chances are you’ll fair considerably better than bands who just ’show up and play’. Recessions are a great time to spend extra effort building and maintaining your fan base.

There are no hard and fast answers to the impact of recessions on the music scene. Every market, venue and performer has idiosyncrasies that make each situation unique.

Handling yourself in a professional manner and promoting yourself is essential at all times, but especially so during hard economic times. The important thing to remember is that recessions tend to come and go on a cyclical basis.

What issues have you seen? What have I missed?

Myspace... utilising it for musicians and businesses

Very interesting article

How can I make money with MySpace? Or rather, should you even bother with developing MySpace as another source of online income? As a social network that sees very heavy daily visitor traffic from millions of users, MySpace has been the target of aspiring entrepreneurs, internet marketers and webmasters.
As everyone knows, traffic of all sorts can be transformed into profit through various monetization methods. MySpace is no exception.
A large number of webmasters, marketers and businesses are trying to promote their products on websites on MySpace and the effects can be seen in the large amount of spammy advertisements across the MySpace network.
It would not be inaccurate to say that making money on MySpace is incrementally more difficult now because of market saturation, due to the entry of so many businesses or individuals who are trying to get a piece of the lucrative MySpace pie.
Personally, I’ve always been interested in MySpace marketing and MySpace related websites because of the sheer market size that MySpace commands.

REST OF ARTICLE HERE

Building a business list

As a woman about to launch a business there is a lot going on behind the scenes...blogging, networking, writing and designing, html, promotion etc etc.... the most important thing when all is in place is GETTING LEADS for my business.

START CREATING YOUR LIST HERE ( FREE )

In two weeks I have 387 join my list from this and it did not cost me a bean.
Clever title too... and smart marketing.

I admit that when I saw this link in my email, I followed it for nothing more than sheer morbid curiosity lol

Afterwards, the reading and researching commenced. I know, a bit backwards, huh? Oh well...

The company are not giving out a lot of information about this right now, creating an air of mystique which creates curiosity It's an invite-only type of deal too, so you can only join up if you've been invited. (Consider yourself invited)

Here's what I have heard so far
* Bubonik is launching next month and when it is released it is supposed to spread like wildfire.

* The program will always be free, no strings attached, no matter what. No upgrading, no fees, no hoops, ever, guaranteed.

* It has a great potential for much profit.

* There will be an availability of marketing tools for existing businesses, blogs, newsletters, mailings, and other such things one might want to tell people about.

* It is a new, unique system for promotion and list building.

* You can remove yourself from the program at any time.

* No selling required.

Here's what they have to say about their secrecy: "For now the secrets behind Bubonik will have to remain under wraps, but believe me, when we launch it WILL work and it will make a LOT OF MONEY very quickly for a lot of people ... whether you are one of them is down to you..."

Like I say, I joined, stuck my link on a few autosurf programs and have gained 387 listees to market to.

Catch The Plague today! Aren't you curious too?