Producers Resources & Tools

A collection of links and such to help any aspiring producers out. Some of the things you can grab:

• Bookmarks for musicians, producers & DJ's - Download these bookmarks that are all categorized neatly. Links to many sites that are useful to a DJ, music producer or musician. Simply import this file into your favorites in your browser. You will need to right click over the link and choose 'Save Target As' or the link will open as a webpage.
  
• Various Contract Templates - This zip file contains 17 various contract templates. Great for Producers, DJ's and Artists. Some of the templates are Remix for Hire, Mobile DJ, Artist Management, Songwriter, Tour Sponsorship, Producer for Hire, Graphic for Hire, and many many more...

http://504productions.com/producer_tools.php

Musicslu.com - A New Model for the Music Business

Sell It Yourself.....

The system is bullshit that you only make about 77,000 dollars from sales topping 2 million.....let's say each copy was sold for 15 bucks each. At 2 million copies, that is 30 million dollars. And she only sees 77 grand? She is right, someone is getting rich off those sales and it sure as hell aint the one who wrote the material.

Lily Allen Angry for Not Earning Enough Money From Album Sales

Lily Allen is unhappy when finding out that she has earned only 50,000 pounds from her debut album "Alright, Still" despite its impressive selling point, which reached almost two million copies worldwide. "I don't make any money out of record sales at all. I make money out of touring and syncs, publishing," she says during an interview in Q Radio.

"My songs being put on 'Grey's Anatomy' things like that," Lily reveals further. "I don't make any money at all from selling an album, which is probably why I feel so angry about doing all this promotion because I am not earning any money out of it, someone else (is) and they don't have to live with the lasting effects."

In related news, Lily Allen has hinted to make a live appearance at this year's Glastonbury Festival during an interview with Absolute Radio Hometime DJ Geoff Lloyd. "I will be playing lots of festival this year. I'm not allowed to say which. But yes, one begins with a G," she states.

Lily's second studio album "It's Not Me, It's You" meanwhile is due to hit the U.K. market on February 9. Its sounds will reportedly range from jazz, country to dance music.

A Recession Is Great For Freelance Work

Now would be a good time to concentrate on making money with your talents, not skills. Get out and talk to people and offer your services. Advertise your services.

Always thought about freelance work but have not found the right time? Well, if we are faced with a recession, experience shows that a recession can be a good time to be a freelancer.

Many larger companies and organizations lay off full-time employees and contract the work out to freelance professionals. It's cheaper for the some companies because they don't have to pay related benefits or long-term employment issues.

How do you get started? You don't need to even quit your full-time job. Becoming a part-time freelance professional has never been easier. Then, if you decide you have enough work and want to switch to full-time later...you can. Some people just stay part-time and enjoy the extra income.

In order to get started, the first step is finding a good freelance community and search for work that may be of interest to you. There are many different freelance communities with thousands of different jobs available. You will just have to find the one that fits your interests and goals.

Once you have found work that you are interested in, you will either apply or bid on the available work. You may not be chosen for every assignment, but with so many available, you are certain to find just the right work for you.

Then you work with employers, complete your assignments, and receive payment.

As you complete more and more work, you will earn a reputation as a freelance professional...so if a recession hits, they will pick you as their worker of choice.

Pro Tools Tutorial - Creating a Backwards Reverb

FL Studio - Automating Effects On and Off

Pro Tools Tutorial - Create a Stutter Effect on a Vocal Line

Congress Restores Arts Funding, Drops Arts Stimulus Ban, After Public Outcry

Here in the US, Congressional Democrats have reversed not one but both bad decisions on the role of the arts in the economic stimulus package. Provisions that would have blocked any stimulus funds from reaching arts centers, museums, and theaters have been dropped. (Golf courses and casinos are still in the ban. Maybe this time, someone read the actual legislation.) And the US$50 million (out of some $800 billion) that would go to the National Endowment for the Arts, dropped from a Senate version, has been restored to the bill. It appears both of those changes not only cleared the House but are part of the Senate version that’s in votes as I write this.

If you believe artists shouldn’t rely exclusively on government funding, you can still celebrate. The arts will receive far less of a handout than a lot of other industries — and do more with it. Arts advocacy groups estimate that for every dollar of the NEA money, another seven dollars will come from public and private supporters. What the tiny amount of federal spending does is make up for shortfalls in lean times, protecting an arts sphere that depends on a variety of sources for revenue. Nearly 15,000 real jobs could be saved by those same estimates. That means an arts infrastructure in the US that can remain healthy and independent.

But the important story here has nothing to do with the stimulus bill, or even the US. It’s that public outcry from people like you rescued this legislation. And if public support can do that, it can do a lot more for the arts, not only in federal spending but other key areas.

Americans for the Arts says supporters from its organization alone sent some 100,000 messages and letters to their Members of Congress. That’s not counting the many more letters and phone calls from constituents, not to mention letters to the editor and press attention.

Here’s one example from CDM comments, by Dartanyan Brown:

I heard the congressman from Nashville (!) talking down the $50 million for the
National Endowment for the Arts. I immediately called his office and let his
staffers know that (blue dog democrat Cooper) was full of hot air on this issue.
As a synthesist, jazz musician and former NEA artist-in-residence I had the
facts and anecdotes to make my points clear.

If Rush Limbaugh can get his folks to call, we can at least counteract them with some facts and persistence.

Call them, they listen, they respond to numbers.

More background on today’s developments:

• House passes stimulus bill with $50 million for artists (Los Angeles Times)
• U.S. Senate Begins Voting on Obama’s $787 Billion Stimulus Plan (Bloomberg)

To all of you who were active, and to our elected representatives who got this right, thanks.

Targeting the arts in this way may have backfired for those elements seeking to vilify it. Instead, it caused thousands of people to rally to the cause. Here’s an example of organizing meetings in Chicago - and a renewed sense that the arts could be part of the economic solution, not the “costly distraction” so many try to make it out to be.

• Organizing Around Art (Chicago Tribune)

I Really Dont Want To Get a Regular Job

Written by Jason Isbell

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit's eponymous album will be released on February 17, 2009 on Lightning Rod Records . Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit is Isbell's second solo release and his first release with his band The 400 Unit. Prior to his solo career Jason was a member of Drive-By Truckers from 2001 to 2007.

When giving anyone advice about the music business, or anything in general, I find it necessary to have a sense of what the person or group of people is trying to achieve. The trick to manipulating the entertainment industry is knowing your specific goals and being willing to work very hard, cut dead weight, and take some chances in order to get there.

For most musicians, at least most that I know, expectations change as time goes on. When I was thirteen, for example, I spent a great deal of my time daydreaming about fame and wealth. In my mind, I had already chosen jobs for all my friends, though there weren't that many, and I had planned out every initial conversation with all my heroes. While these dreams haven't left me altogether, my priorities now line up far more evenly with my reality. Today, my wildest dreams of rock stardom can be boiled down to this: I really don't want to get a regular fucking job. I think that's an achievable goal that, in the long run, can make me very happy, indeed.

It's clear that this isn't enough for everyone. If you want to be a star, which I don't advise, you should probably stay with a more traditional method of using the business. Audition for anything that comes your way, network until your iPhone is full of numbers and your soul is locked away in your inner monologue (the soul just gets in the way of celebrity), and listen with feverish intensity to that wisest of fanny-packed and man-sandled sage, the A&R person. Allow that person's creative input to guide your creative output, and he or she will be your guide to credibility and artistic worth, at least in the eyes of the average. If you write songs, don't scare anybody. Keep it short and don't try to impress. Dress accordingly. Find a manager that demands at least twenty percent. Anything less, and you'll find yourself up saddle creek without a paddle. You'll probably want to devote every realized thought and every waking hour to understanding and pronouncing the word 'yes'. Make it your mantra. You'll get time for yourself later, when you're loaded and can afford to hide.

This is clearly not the path for folks like us. I write songs to teach myself how to feel about something, and when I see a crowd of people in front of me, singing along to those songs, I can't help but think I'm not alone in this world. This interaction is a plant that must be grown and cultivated. Find people you trust to water it when you're away. At this point in my career, the best tip I can give anyone is this: Work with your friends. Oh, and don't have stupid, greedy, negligent friends. Seems easy enough, I guess.

Internet, internet, internet. Any discussion of the music business would not be complete without the inclusion the of the mighty mighty media, the new Goliath killer that allows all of us shoe-gazing Davids access to the most powerful slingshot in history. With a click or two, we can propel our music to all corners of the world, or receive music form the least popular new band in Belgium. Become familiar with it. Unknown bands now have the ability to spend their spare time spreading the word without anyone else's help or authorization. I could sit in front of my computer and connect with hundreds or thousands of people in a day's time. If only a small percentage of these folks ever become fans of my band, that is a big step in the right direction. MySpace, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube... It's as if these sites have been custom built for emerging bands and artists, and they're easy to use. Don't complain about their power, and don't underestimate it.

Tour, tour, tour. My final piece of advice for those interested in making a living in music is to get your ass on the road. You don't have to wait on labels or radio or anything else. The Ford Econoline van is the greatest automobile ever made. Get one, load it up, and call in every favor you can. Trust friends to tell you where to play and put in a good word with the booker. If you're any good and you work hard, you should be able to find someone to take over your booking. Once you get an agent, you can usually find a manager. Once you have an agent and a manager, you can usually find a label. Don't be afraid to fire any of these people at any time, and remember that they work for you, not the other way around. In many cases, you could do their job, but they can't do yours.

If you work very hard and still have no success, there's a chance that you might be making bad music. If that's the case, I can't help you. However, if you put all of your energy into achieving well-thought-out goals, like that of not having to work a regular job and making the best music you can make, something might accidentally catch fire and you might find yourself with a hit. Stranger things have happened. More than likely, though, you'll build a relatively small but loyal group of fans that will follow you to your grave. That can enable you to make music for a living for the rest of your life, and that's way better than being famous. I hope.

www.knowthemusicbiz.com

FL Studio - Music Theory - Beats, Bars and Tempo

www.remixingservices.com

Looking to have your music remixed for a future release? Are you looking for professional remix production and remix services for your label or song at an affordable cost? Looking for dance music remixers or dance music producers with experience in mainstream dance music?

Our remix producers have almost 25 years experience in the dance music industry. Our remixers are not only a DJ's & Producer's, but also Musicians. A vital important piece to any solid remix project.

We can take any song and turn it in too a dance mix for the clubs. If you are a band or artist of any genre, contact us to have your single song turned into an extended maxi-single.

Our remixes are not only original, but they also maintain the very essence of the original track. Keeping the original artist very satisfied about the rendition of their original track

Hip Hop Artists: We specialize in eHop. It is a style of dance music where they combine hip hop and dance music!

Check Out "That's Gangster" from Bun B

Our Remixers
Dan the Man produces high quality trance / house tracks. His remixes pump a dance floor with emotion based melodies and driving bass lines. His mainstream lean is a major plus in pushing your track to the charts. If you are interested in hiring Dan the Man for your remix project, please contact us.

Tears of Technology produces high quality south eastern dance music. His styles are based from the genres of Breakbeat, Florida Breaks, Trance and Freestyle. He blends these styles into one beautiful composition. If you are interested in hiring Tears of Technology for your remix project, please contact us.

Ford produces high quality Billboard charting trance. If you are looking for a Billboard charting remixer, then look no further than Ford. Ford has earned 19 Multi-Platinum, Platinum and Gold RIAA sales awards for mixing and producing many of the world's biggest artists, plus he has had 38 Billboard Charting Hits. If you are interested in hiring Ford for your remix project, please contact us.

http://remixingservices.com

Easy Way to Add Friends to MySpace!

Are You Wired for Tomorrow?

The information age is at hand. This is a great video that has some really interesting facts. These facts can be considered and used to help advance your art. Call it a better understanding...

Digital Boom Creates Music Sales Record

British music sales are booming as young fans increasingly buy songs online rather than illegally downloading them, the country's industry body said Wednesday.

The BPI, formerly known as the British Phonographic Industry, said big-selling releases by artists including Leona Lewis, Coldplay, the Killers and Take That also helped drive sales to record levels last year.

The industry has struggled in recent years to adapt to rapidly changing technologies, and has been hit hard by illegal downloading of music via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing websites.

But download sales grew by 33 percent last year, while 2008 was the biggest sales year on record in terms of singles sales in all formats, with 115 million single tracks sold.

The deepening recession has hit some retailers -- notably Woolworths and high street music retailer Zavvi, formerly Virgin Megastore -- but in other ways it could even be helping the industry, said BPI boss Geoff Taylor.

"Every business and consumer in the UK is having a tough time, and these difficult trading conditions make the resilience of the UK's music market all the more notable," he said.

"During a recession, people look for purchases that are excellent value for money and bring a lot of enjoyment, and music does just this," he added.

While downloads of single tracks have soared, the market for albums has also been helped by growing online sales: some 10 million albums were sold, a 65 percent increase on 2007.

Kim Bayley, head of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said traditional high street music sales were also holding up. "Music performed better in UK stores in 2008 than anyone had expected.

"The big lesson of 2008 is that if the music is strong enough and retailers work well with suppliers to get that product in-store, music fans will respond and buy in their droves."

The upbeat British music news came a day after US technology giant Apple said that every song in its iTunes library will be available without anti-piracy software by April.

What Makes A Winning Music Business Strategy?

by Kavit Haria, Music Business Consultant

I asked myself this crucial question when writing my latest e-book, "What are the important skills and practices required to create a winning and profitable music business apart from good music?"

The answer rests in being a good leader of your ship, having a well-designed and communicated strategy and a good marketing plan that can be executed to promote your music in a structured way.

If you re-read that last paragraph, you'll see how much I emphasize the idea of strategy and structure. It is with this careful planning and well-understood principles that your music business will become profitable.

STRATEGY
A strategy comes to life through its ability to influence hundreds and thousands of decisions, both big and small, made by anyone from the director level to the street team level. It is, at its core, a guide to how you behave and provides an external reflection of your music business.

A good strategy fuels and ignites your fire to more compelling actions and results. It leads you to a destination that is clear in your mind. A bad strategy on the other hand leads you to a less competitive, less differentiated position. It is simply a waste of time and energy as it does not move you forward; instead, it keeps you where you're already at.

The word "winning" is important in this context. An average strategy plan, when executed, gets you mediocre results and may not be a fair reflection of your true talent. A winning strategy plan on the other hand transforms your current situation into monster success through developing the right tools, people, techniques and street teams to share your art with the wider world.

As musicians, we are explorers. As explorers, our job is to explore the depths of our hearts and souls to share the music that feels most at home to us. Our job is to experiment, and experimentation takes time before it is successful.

Your music business needs a framework for achieving results that can be built upon to achieve your specific goals in your specific music genre. When you start to put together a puzzle, you would start by finding the corners and the edge pieces before building and assembling the inner pieces. It is the same with putting together the framework for your music business.

Constructing a music business plan is the first step in gaining clarity and direction in what you'll do, how often you'll release an album, how you'll market your music and how you'll make money. The framework of your music business is what holds it all together - the operations, the marketing, the management and the finances. Let's look at each one separately.

OPERATIONS PLAN
Your business operations is the activities your music business will do in order to share your music. These are usually gigs (what type of gigs?), recording (how often? when?), distribution (whom? how?), sponsorship, and other avenues of generating revenue.

MARKETING PLAN
The activities and tactics you will undertake to promote your music through your music business. These may include PR, social networking on Facebook, Myspace, etc, blogging, podcasting, video blogging, flyer and poster marketing, etc.

MANAGEMENT PLAN
Who will form your core team for your music business and what will they do? Regardless of whether you have the capacity to get these people involved, knowing what you want is core to getting a framework to build your music business.

FINANCE PLAN
Knowing what money goes out and what comes in is crucial to understanding how your music business can be successful. My accountant often tells me that the success of my business is equal to how well I can understand the numbers on my cash flow sheet. He is right and I pass this advice on to you.

The Rise & Rise of Independent Music

The Association of Independent Music (AIM) is holding a special event to celebrate 50 years of successful independent music which will include a gig, a five part television series, a one off auction on ebay and the release of a double CD full of "independent" covers. Artists including The Prodigy, The Charlatans and Maximo Park have all given their backing to the cause and plan to donate songs for the album. Songs to be covered include Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, PIL's Public Image and Ghost Town by The Specials.

Independents Day marks the anniversary of Chris Blackwell and Graeme Goodall's indie label, Island Records. The Jamaican-born label signed giants U2 before selling to Polygram in 1989, a trend which many independent labels followed. Creation and Factory records disappeared in the 1990's whilst others folded through a calamity of errors from over expansion to cashflow problems.

Independent music is responsible for more than 25% of the UK's music scene and is claimed to have pioneered the music industry for many years. Alison Wenham, Chairman for AIM stated that [independents] had been "at the forefront of every single new musical movement over the years."

For proof of this, just take a look at every popular music scene over the last 50 years: There was the DIY punk scene in the seventies, the indie guitar sounds from New Order in the eighties and the massive dance music boom in the nineties.

Today, we are seeing the independent label make a comeback. Domino Records have given us two recent chart toppers; Scottish band, Franz Ferdinand and northerners, Arctic Monkeys. The internet has provided a new platform with which to promote this music. Sites such as Myspace, Youtube and Facebook all promote bands young and old, signed and unsigned for general consumption. These social networking sites have allowed users to access new music much easier than ever before with some 40% of users embedding music within their pages.

Russell Hart, chief executive of Entertainment Media Research added "Social networks are fundamentally changing the way we discover music... the dynamics of democratisation, word of mouth recommendation and instant purchase challenge the established order and offer huge opportunities to forward thinking business."

Local label, Signature Tune is making the most of these sites and one of their bands, Lakes is reaping the benefits of using an independent label. Scott Byatt, the band's drummer said "As a band on an independent label, advances in communication and technology mean we can communicate with bands and promoters the world over helping us network and get shows with ease... Our CDs can be bought in many high street stores and our tracks can be downloaded from iTunes, once again without the help of a major."

Radiohead were perhaps the first big band to see the change in direction and act upon it. After the end of their contract with music giants EMI, the band went solo with the release of their latest album, In Rainbows. The album was released as a digital download in October 2007, allowing customers to pay as much, or as little as they liked for it. The group took ownership of their own songs and released ten tracks online more than one month before the tangible album was released in the shops.

Front man for the band, Thom Yorke noted the growing number of pirate copies of their music being appearing online and in an interview with Wired he said, "every record for the last four - including my solo record - has been leaked. So the idea was like, we'll leak it then." Yorke's attempt to beat the pirates seem to have worked. On average, the electronic download sold for 4 GBP. Not bad considering you could download it for free if you were feeling too tight to pay.

The return to indie worked wonders for Radiohead. Although the downloads from the website, inrabows were not counted in the album charts, the band did manage to create enough hype and speculation around the release of their album that when the CD actually hit the shops, it reached number one in the UK album chart, the United World Chart and the US Billboard 200.

Other groups may do well to take note of this action when considering future releases. Of the music industry, and in particular their ex record label, Yorke added "What we would like is the old EMI back again, the nice genteel arms manufacturers who treated music [as] a nice side project who weren't too bothered about the shareholders. Ah well, not much chance of that."

Au contraire, EMI boss, Guy Hands is keen to seize upon the opportunities presented by smaller, independent labels. These labels have always maintained a stronger working relationship with their artists and are much more keen to try their hands at new promotional techniques. With the renaissance of DIY music and bands creating music for music's sake, independent labels cannot be ignored. EMI declared that they are planning on working like a larger version of the indie label, with many smaller labels working under their umbrella.

So they may be more willing to try new techniques, but the problem of shareholders still remains. Wenham continues, "If you have shareholders to please, inevitably it becomes about making music from the music." Indie music is very much about the music and as long as the shareholders give the smaller labels a wide berth, we should continue to see more impressive acts pushing the scene forward.

From the Buzz Factor

Indie Music Marketing Secrets Report

• Download it directly using this link (PDF)

How to Recession-Proof Your Music Career

• Download it directly using this link (PDF)

Distribution for Your Album as an Independent Artist

Top 10 Mistakes Artists Make

By David Hooper

If you want to get a record deal, get people to your shows, or sell music like crazy, the answer isn't some kind of "magic pill" website that you post your music on, blindly sending out a bunch of demos, or anything to do with having good music... although good music certainly helps. The answer is to develop a mindset that naturally attracts people to what you're doing as well as an understanding of how the music business game is played.

As you develop as a person, your music career will develop with you. Sounds crazy, but it's true, and I've seen it time and time again, with thousands of acts that I've worked with, from garage bands, to the guys selling out arenas.

Of course, part of developing includes making mistakes along the way. Check out these ten common music business mistakes, and ways to avoid them...

10. Being Too Difficult (or too nice)
First of all, let’s get this clear... Just because you wrote a few good songs and recorded them, it doesn’t mean the world revolves around you. Lots of people write and record good songs, so get in line.

Contrary to what the online rumor mill or media would have you believe, people in the music business are involved because they love music, and they’re not making enough to deal with jerks. And they won’t deal with jerks. If you’re a pain, they’re just go to the next guy, who also writes good songs, but has a better attitude.

With that said, don’t be too nice. You don’t have to say yes to everything. Pick your battles. If there is something you really feel strongly about, don’t settle for anything less.

Bottom line: Keep your ego in check and behave with courtesy and respect. At the same time, don't let anyone treat with you anything less.

9. Trying to Convince People of Anything...
You play music, and people have strong opinions about music. Either people get what you’re doing or they don’t.

So, some reviewer, booking agent, or manager doesn't like your new album. Let it go! Don't try to convince him he'll like it better after a second listen. He won't. And the more you press him to give your music another shot, the more he’ll remember how annoying you were. This means he’ll be far less open to ever listening to you again.

There are a lot of people who won't "hear it" when you approach them. So what? Move on. There are plenty of other people in this business who can help you. Go find the people who do "hear it" and put your energy into building good relationships with them instead.

8. Looking for Industry Approval
There was a time when the "industry" had a lot more pull when it came to breaking an artist, getting them distributed, and everything else. This is a new time, so we're playing with different rules now.

Distribution is easy. Every day, more and more albums and songs are being sold online, physically and digitally. Recording music is easier than ever. You are not limited by a lack of options for getting something recorded that sounds professional.

But more importantly, once you get a recording together, you don't need the industry to tell you your music is worthy. The consumers, the people who buy music, are really the only opinions that matter. And when you have the love of the consumers, the industry will come around.

The thing is, in the music industry, technology has changed faster than mindset. Stop believing you are at the mercy of any record label executive. You're not. Connect directly with your fans on your terms. The feedback, loyalty and money you receive from them will be far more gratifying than you spending your time beating your head against a wall trying to figure out a way to get an approving nod from a record label.

7. Not Building Strong Relationships with Fans
People aren't stupid. They know when they're being marketed to. They know when you're looking to sell them something.

Do they mind? No.

In fact, if you have a good relationship with your fans, they won't mind being marketed to, and if you do it well, they look forward to being marketed to. However, they have to know you care. Building relationships with fans take time. You have to show them you care.

Do things like:

• Give them a few free songs to download.
• Have message board on your website and build a community there.
• Do a "fan appreciation" show.
• Record a holiday album or an EP that you give out exclusively to members of your fan club.

Show them in special ways that you not only care, but that you're willing to go the extra mile to show your appreciation. In turn, they will buy your music, travel to see you play, call radio stations on your behalf, and promote you all over the web.

Every day – no matter if you're busy recording, on the road, or at home worrying about how you're going to find the money to make your project happen – do something (no matter how small the gesture is) to reach out to your fans.

6. Not "Getting" How the Fan / Artist Relationship Works
You’re the leader and your fans do the following. You make the offer, they choose whether or not to accept.

Take charge, record the music, play the shows, print the t-shirts, and let them have the options of buying your album, coming to see you, or getting something to wear.

The average person has enough leadership duties to deal with in his or her own day. People are looking for somebody else to take control, so take control and let them ride along for a little while.

5. Laying Everything on the Table...
You're a rock star. You’re living the dream. Keep up that fantasy. Don't tell people how broke you are, that you're still living with your mother, or anything else that breaks the image of you fans have in their minds.

One of the reasons people like music is because they have the opportunity to live vicariously through the people they are listening to. When you are on stage, they're up there with you. When you're on the road in your tour bus, they're riding shotgun. Don't take that away.

Give them insight into your life and what it's like in your world, but always remember, you're not just selling music – you're also selling a persona.

4. Thinking the "Key to Success" is Just Musical Talent, Money, or Looks
Yes, if we're talking about pop music, MTV, or the major label system, a certain amount of a contrived "image" probably helps sell records.

Obviously, money helps things. And it's always good if you can play and sing.

But "image" without marketing won’t get you on MTV. Good songs without marketing won’t get you on the radio. You can play well, have money, and look like a model, but if you don't have the marketing to back you up, none of it matters.

You know what? If you don’t have a good, solid marketing plan in place, everything else doesn't matter so much.

3. Giving Up Power
Keep control as long as you can. Yes, a label deal will give you opportunity that being an indie won't. And a professional manager has connections that you don't.

But when you sign with these guys, you're handing over your career to somebody else. Nobody cares as much about your career than you do. When you and your talent are the most important commodity you have to offer, do not give up your power easily and without a damn good reason.

Your music is worth something. You are worth something. Think of your career as being "virtual real estate" which, if marketed correctly, will pay dividends for years to come. So, treat it like that.

2. Jumping at Every Opportunity
You don't have to say yes to everything. In fact, sometimes, saying no to something can be more beneficial to your career than saying yes.

Why do you say yes to things? Take a look at your standards and make sure they’re high enough. As an example, just because a club has a PA system, it doesn't mean that it's worth playing there. There are some gigs that just aren't worth playing. There are some connections that just aren't worth developing.

When you say yes to something, especially something that takes your time, you're likely saying no to a host of other things by default. Leave yourself open to saying yes to the opportunities that really matter.

Trust your own judgment. If something doesn't feel right and you want to say no, it's okay. At that moment, you may worry you're passing up a great opportunity and will be missing out. The reality is better opportunities (that are a better fit for you) will come if you are open and ready for them.

1. Not Getting Help
You don't know everything. This business has been around for a long time – long before you were involved.

Read books, get advice from people who work in the industry and keep studying every aspect of the industry. Don't be afraid to ask for help. You can bypass a lot of the problems you're likely to run into simply by asking people who have already been in, and dealt with, the situations you find yourself in.

Remember this: Time is worth more than money. You can always earn more money, but you have a limited amount of time. Don't waste your time. If you don't know something, or need specific help, don't be afraid to pay somebody to help you deal with whatever obstacle you face. Don't let anything stop you from having all the knowledge and know-how you need to have the success you aspire to have.

David Hooper has been serving the independent music community for over a decade and is host of the syndicated radio show, Music Business Radio. Visit www.MusicMarketing.com for more information on David and additional music business advice. For more Top 10 lists, go to www.musicmarketing.com/top_10/

Using Technology to Create a Successful Music Career