Welcome to Episode 25 of the Bandhive Podcast.

Welcome back to another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. As always, my name is James. And in every odd numbered episode I have with me Wait, You're not Aaron today. You're Matt Hoos.

What are you doing here in Matt? It's a crossover. We're doing a crossover episode. It is. It is. We have swapped places because this is part of a two part episode. So if you have not yet listen to Episode 24 which came out last Tuesday, please go check that out. It's all about staying relevant during the coronavirus crisis, and this week we're going to talk about education and preparation so you can come out of the crisis kicking when things start going back to normal and be ready to be the best band you possibly can.

Aaron will be back next week and the week after that. But for now, we get to have a lovely chat with Matt. So how are you, Matt? I'm doing pretty awesome. It's a beautiful day here in Colorado and hoping to ride the vitamin D train today and catch some rays. That's good. That's good. Not too many, though. As a redhead, I can't catch too many. Raise lots of sunblock. That's right. SPF 100 Life, baby. Oh, no, dude, I feel your pain. I'm not even redhead and I burned so easily My first three days on warp tour, I had the worst sock tan line.

It was insane, and I had that tan line for about three years before it finally faded. I mean, of all the things that I've sold on Warp tour, the easiest was sunglasses and sunscreen. That's not surprising. Super easy to market that is, a ginger Yeah, absolutely. And on that note, actually, in Episode 24 we were talking about marketing stuff, and you had mentioned marketing masks, custom masks with your band's branding on them. That's got to be just azizia selling sunblock right now, So if you can produce masks that are effective and safe.

That's the thing that every band should be doing right now, at least in moderation, because everyone wants a mask. And you know what? Wearing a mask. It's not really any fun, but if it has your favorite bands logo on it, it's a little more fun. Totally so. Actually, corn had a sale. They hit record sales for their masks, which was really comical, I think. Originally it was supposed to be a joke that they were saying, Oh, you know, we have masks. But then when they started to fly off the shelves just as quickly as toilet paper it you became a little less of a joke.

And then a band who wasn't able to tour was then able to make more money off of that single item of marriage, probably than they ever would have off that item. So, you know, nature laughs last. Yeah, the world is changing, and at least some of the changes are going to be around for quite some time. So the more you can adapt, the better off you're gonna be in your business. Absolutely. I think it's kind of perfect, because it perfectly plays into what we were saying, You know, last week about Corona beer company not jumping on an opportunity.

Thio turn a negative situation positive. Corn did that, you know, And it's funny because now Corn was literally selling masks to people that have probably never heard their music before. Probably do not agree with their moral, their moral worldview and would probably never, ever in a million years think about supporting that band. But lo and behold, nature laughs last. Yeah, exactly well, and I think that also plays into what we're going to talk about today, at least the first part of it, but probably both parts, since we're going to talk about education first.

If you do this properly, you're gonna have a better understanding of not only the music business and you're banned, but also the world, and be more able to efficiently and effectively adapt to changes around you. So with that being said, I think we should just jump right in and get started talking about what kind of education you should have for yourself as we're going through this crisis and how you can create good habits that will let you continue to educate yourself after the crisis ends. So with education, it's almost always going to cost money, at least for quality content.

There's a lot of free content out there, but it depends on what you're doing, so you have to think of it as an investment in yourself. Now, when it comes to what you want to learn, you should focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. And that's because those are things that you already do well. And if you could do those even better and have your bandmates handle the things that they're better at, that maybe you're not as good at. That's gonna be the strongest team you could build now, Matt, I know you love to say aces in their places, and this is exactly what we're talking about if you're a good songwriter, but you're terrible with business, but your band mate is great with business, and they're the drummer, and they don't really participate in song writing.

That's fine. You know what? Your band mate should focus on the business and learn as much as they possibly can about running a band, and you should focus on making the best songs you possibly can because not everyone is going to be good at everything. I always say I'm not that great at marketing. That's why mats on the podcast. We're building a team here to cover our bases and talk about different topics on this show. So, Matt, what do you think people should be doing when they're trying to educate themselves to really get things going and get into good habits and make sure they're not just sitting around on Netflix all day?

Well, you know, that's a great question because it definitely comes in all shapes and sizes. It looks one of a million different ways, and everybody individually is going to know where their strengths and where their weaknesses are. We all see our own weaknesses and other people. That's why we critique other people. So if you can take that lens and turn it interest, you know, turn it on yourself, be a little more introspective. It's very easy to find quality ways to grow now. As a musician, you have a ton of different avenues.

You have your merch avenues. You have your business avenues. You have your song writing avenues. You have your social aspects of the band. Any job that you could sit back and say, Do I delegate this in the band? Is this gonna be a job that I'm gonna be doing on a regular basis? Well, then you have a Nebo undimmed time right now to really turn that to 11. I know for me, I love writing songs. Obviously, writer's block is a very real thing. Sometimes you get in one of those funks where you can't force creativity, and anybody that's ever written a song knows that, you know, like you can try.

And then it gets the the title of filler track, and you can always tell when you listen to an album where you're just like man, this song's really good and I really enjoy it, but it's filler. You know, this last song, this guy was doing this poetic dance with his words and four chord structures. And this song he's, you know, singing some generic lyrics about, like driving a car around or something like that. I like to call those your are radio songs, your commercial songs. Rather the book Scar Tissue, which is the autobiography of Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Excellent book. If anybody hasn't read it. I highly recommend reading it because there's some fascinating stories in there. There's a lot of growth talks about struggles, losing people close to you, how to survive in an industry after you've lost a friend. Ah, lot of really, really intense battles from somebody who's really stood the test of time, so I think it's, ah, fantastic read. But in that book, he talks about one of his songs, I believe, off their 1989 album, Mother's Milk. He wrote a song about driving around in a car with the top down with a girl in the car, and he always said that he never loved that song.

The only reason that he wrote that song is because a friend told him that he should write that song. He basically asked him, Why don't you write songs about, you know, driving around in your car, your fast cars with the top down? This was during the eighties and the nineties, and so that was a very popular topic. When writing about music. Well, anybody that's ever listen to the Chili Peppers knows that they love singing about California. They love singing about like drugs and trials and struggles and people that have changed their lives.

And here he wrote this song about a car well, then turns out a little bit later, Chevrolet reached out to them and said, We want to use this song as a commercial song And because Anthony Kiedis believed so little in that song, he turned down the opportunity for tons and tons and tons of money because he didn't believe in the track, he wrote a filler song. He forced himself to be creative. He then also goes on to talk about how, when The Red Hot Chili Peppers right an album, they write 40 songs.

Then they whittle those down with the help of Rick Rubin, one of the greatest producers in the history of production. And most of the time they're albums come out with, like, 15 or more songs on them because they're able to take those 40 take 25 of them out and whittle it down to the ones that they all feel are the best and that, you know, that's a true like peer review system that works incredibly well, and the only reason it works well is because each and every member in that band has taken the time to prepare ahead of time.

So that way, when they get into the studio, when they get into a writing process, when they come down to narrowing their tracks down, they're educated, they're prepared and they're ready to get things done to start to. This is it. You know, it manifests in a ton of different ways, but it starts with planning your time wisely. I know for me, if I don't wake up in the morning and do something productive, then that is starting off on the wrong foot. I like to always put my best foot forward.

And that doesn't mean that every day that I wake up, I'm gonna wake up and write a hit song or anything like that. What it means is that every day I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna try. And for some of you, it might be simple little things I love. Rapid tasking is what they call. They used to call it multitasking. Multitasking is is now debunked myth. It's called rapid tasking where you do a bunch of really small tasks in succession to get a bunch of things done.

This helps release a bunch of endorphins, which makes your mood increase drastically. If you start the morning feeling productive, it pushes you into a gear of production for the rest of the day. There's an old phrase that I love, and it's How do you get to Carnegie Hall? You practice practice, practice, and that's absolutely the truth. Now it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, we live in a very evolved music industry where before, as a musician, if you practice practice practice you would be playing in the Philharmonic, you'd be, you know you'd started Third chair, moved to second, moved to first.

And after a long career, you might be playing. You know, you're the first chair violin on, you know, Carnegie Hall, this, you know, world renowned music venue. You know that people from hundreds of years ago would have killed to play, which is an incredible thing for that first chair violin. That practice practice practice looks like physical practice, practice practice. But for somebody that's running a business that looks like read, read, read, listen, listen, listen, learn, learn, learn. At the height of his career, Michael Jordan was known around the entire world, and this is before the Internet, the two most popular names in the world where Michael Jordan and Mohammed Ali and they were so popular that you could dotolo Bushwhack Village in the middle of nowhere and people would know those names people that don't have male.

And you know what people said about him at the height of his career. What his coaches, what his peers, what anybody who ever had any interaction with him on in a business world said about Michael Jordan. They said that he was a sponge, that he absorbed everything that people told him. There was once an interview with one of his less famous teammates when he was playing on the Bulls, a player who was incredibly dwarfed by the magnitude of Michael Jordan and Michael came off the court one time, sat next to him, and he turned to him.

He said, Hey, I've noticed that when you shoot your free throws, you don't bend your knees enough. Now Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player that had ever existed and arguably still is. And what did he dio? He could have turned to this guy and said, I'm sorry. I'm in the gym two hours before you two hours after you. I'm the team captain. I have the records in three points, steals and all these other fantastic things. But instead he said okay and he applied it. Learning and investing in yourself and really growing your band, your brand.

It starts with humility. It starts with saying maybe other people know something that I need. Sam Walton, who started Walmart, was once arrested in Argentina, Nicaragua, somewhere in Central America. And they called his family and said, We've arrested Sam and they said, What are you doing? You can't do that. Sam is the richest man in the world. You can't arrest him. So they went down to this, you know, wherever it was, Nicaragua, whatever. And when they got to the jail, they explained that this is who he is, you know?

And they're like, Oh, we're so sorry. We didn't realize we thought he was a crazy person. And we locked him up for his own safety. And he said, Well, why did you think he was a crazy person? They said, Well, he was crawling around on the floor with a tape measure. And so when they asked Sam why he was crawling around on the floor of this random department store with a tape measure, he said. Well, I was measuring the distance between the racks because I wanted to see if they knew something that I didn't.

And this is coming from a man who had built the largest business empire in the world talking about a second rate department store in a random country in Central America. Now that type of humility is what will Really. That's where you're gonna get your true investment, your true return on investment. If you start with your best foot forward, you walk out that door saying, What can I learn today and who can I learn it from? Then you'll start to live a life of abundance, and you'll realize that there is knowledge flowing all around you, and all you have to do is put your cup out.

It's very, very, very hard to fill a cup that's already full. And if you know everything about the music industry, then you probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast anyway. But the bottom line is, is none of us dio because marketing is an ever changing world. This industry is an ever changing world. Right now, we're in the middle of a pandemic that is reshaping the very frame of our entire industry. And so how do you adapt? You get online and you say, How do I do online concerts?

Well, you get online and you find a company that's willing to take payments on your next merch order. Instead of paying everything all up front, you find fulfillment centers. You find ways to limit your risk. You find ways to stimulate other parts of your industry. But then you also look at new ways to innovate. Industries die if they don't adapt and they don't innovate. Unfortunately, sometimes innovation comes out of tragedy. That's what we're in the middle of in the tech world. When we think of innovation, we think of like, oh, like cool.

The new iPhone 11 now has three cameras, so now I can shoot four K 60 frames a second, which is incredible, but we don't think of okay, why are we still having one person stand at a door, collecting tickets and stamping the backs of people's hands and people's ideas air out? There's not a better system for this. Of course, there is. But the thing is, there's never been. There's never been this dire need to change it. Right now we're in the middle of dire needs to change things, and for you, it starts with your daily practice.

Me, I love scales. I love to sit down and warm my fingers up in the morning. You know, if your vocalist waking up in doing vocal skills in the morning sucks, it's awful. You wake up, you're like, you know, your wheezy. You're hitting all these flat notes because, you know, whatever reason, maybe you stayed up too late. Maybe you didn't drink enough water. Maybe you had too much coffee. There's a billion reasons, but my point is you have to build a template that works for you. You have to figure out what it is that starts your morning.

Some people like to wake up in the morning and read books. I think that's awesome. If you wanna wake up, listen to an audiobook or podcast, start your morning by gaining knowledge. I challenge anybody, anyone in the world to read one book a day and then after seven days, tell me it wasn't worth it. If you could do that, I'll coach you for the rest of my life. I'll do it for free. But if you could do that, I would be blown away because preparation, knowledge, understanding and then integration assume that you can see what other people are doing.

Practice that and then figure out a way to integrate it into your system. And not every practice needs to be integrated. There's different strokes for different folks. You cannot use the same formula for everything. And so you may have to make little tweaks, and that's where peer reviews come in. Everybody's online right now, so I promise you there's at least 10,000 musicians out there that would probably be willing to listen to your latest track and critique it. Here's another thing. If somebody critiques your track, take that to heart.

Most of the time, these air like your friends. And if they're willing to give you a critique, it's hard for them to give you a critique because they're your friend and they don't wanna let you down. But at the same time, if they give you a critique and you don't listen to it, that's kind of just a giant slap in the face for them. Here's this thing that I really think would make your song better objectively. And then you're like, Okay, cool. I don't really care. What was the point of even reaching out?

So the integration is everything. And it's not to say that you have to integrate every single idea because some people are gonna have different ideas. But that's where picking and choosing the people that are in your circle. Like maybe you don't ask the guy who Onley listens to music on Fridays. What his opinion on your New Friday song is. Maybe you only ask somebody in the music industry, and it's gonna look different for everybody. But it all starts with education. You work hard, you practice, practice, practice, you learn, you learn, you learn and you integrate.

And once you integrate, that's when you actually have a formula that you can start to tweak and really start to help you adapt out of whatever situation you're in exactly. And I think one really important thing to add to what you're saying, where you were talking about learning from other people. I see far too many musicians hating on successful musicians don't hate on them. Look at what they're doing and see how you could do something similar. Now I'm not gonna lie. I wasn't a big Justin Bieber fan back in the day.

I thought, ridiculous. Just some kids singing pop songs that are like Britain and produced for him. No big deal. And then I worked a couple of his shows, and I saw his live production and realized you know what? He may or may not be singing live. I don't care, because what he is doing and what this entire production is doing is impressive. They're selling 10 20,000 tickets a night for three nights in a row at Staples Center. I think two of the three shows were sold out, selling, meet and greets for like, $3000 per person, which is insane.

I don't understand why people would pay that much. I don't agree with paying that much for something. But if somebody were toe pay $3000 toe meet and greet a client of mine, sure, why not? You know, like if somebody has that much money to blow, let him do it. My point being is don't hang on people, even trapped like we were talking about last episode. Don't hate on them for doing something that's effective. I mean, you can hate on him for the methods all you want. I'm fine with that.

But look, it is what he's doing and see how you can do that without coming across as an entire jerk and figure it out and do that for your band. On a side note yesterday, we did mention that Trapped was doing some impressive things. Marketing and I sent James a message last night laughing because they're Singer basically decided to challenge iced tea to a bare knuckle fistfight. Now this does get a lot of coverage and a lot of people looking at it, sharing it, talking about it.

But I would highly, highly, highly recommend against any sort of marketing that revolves around violence. Agreed for multiple reasons. One because it's wrong and you suck if you dio. But more importantly, if you threaten somebody and something happens to them, like if ice T gets in a car accident tomorrow because the lead singer for trapped made a public threat about a fight and there's signs that he was in a fight and then his body turns up, trapped is going to prison, and that's all there is to it.

They may have never even seen each other, but the thing is, he made that threat in this public forum, and that would ruin his his very dusty career. Oh, man, if he got his career back in the last two weeks by all this drama and then loses it like that karma, baby karma don't joke. It would be funny to Yeah, here's hoping that nothing happens toe iced tea. Or I think his name's Chris Brown or anyone else involved. Here's hoping they all stay fine. And Chris Brown decides on other marketing methods that don't involve being injured.

E think he also threatened to fight somebody else. There was like two or three people that he said he would bare knuckle fight. Yeah, and he wanted to sue Sumerian Records. He's claiming that they threatened to kill him or something like that. It's a mess. Oh, and that's why you don't drink the Kool Aid guy's yes, yes, long story short look at what trapped is doing and recognize that it's effective. Don't do exactly what they're doing, but modify it to be effective without ruining your life. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, man, for a band that hasn't released a song and, well, no, they probably least times recently. But they haven't released a hit. And, like, 18 years, I want to say was 2002 that had strong came out? We've talked about trapped far too much on this podcast. It's come up, I think, four times in 25 episodes. That's Ah lot. That's probably more than we've mentioned any other band, so well, anyway, we have some different educational methods that you can use that you've got a dad. Matt, do you want to go over those and talk about some of the pros and cons of each different method?

Absolutely. So I'm a huge proponent of YouTube. YouTube tutorials are absolutely incredible. You have a litany of people dedicated to the advancement of education, and they get on YouTube. They're the unsung heroes of our generation. They don't make enough money to monetize on most of these. They don't make enough money for ad revenue or anything like that. So why do they keep doing it? Well, they truly believe in the education of everyone. How awesome. Is it as a little kid to be able to get on YouTube and look up how to structure chords, how to play guitar skills and the fact that you can get on there and find a video?

You know, you might have to sift through a couple to find exactly what you're looking for, but that's because there's an abundance of materials. YouTube has become the new library, where before, if you were trying to become an expert on the subject, you have to find a book. You have to go and search through this giant catalog and you'd find that book and hopefully that text would have the information that you're gleaning. However, that might not be the case, you know, maybe the book was a little more autobiographical.

Or maybe the book was a little more about, you know, the work that they did, or something like that. And the same thing works for YouTube. You can get on there and you can find a video I'm sure of like, this is a G chord and they show you the proper way to hold your guitar. They show you how to tune your strings. They show you the proper height adjustment for your strap. There's lots of amazing things that you can find on YouTube, and it's abundant, so you might have toe sift through a few things.

But YouTube tutorials are incredible. If you're able to get on and watching YouTube video, then support that person who made that, shoot them alike, shoot them a comment, shoot them a thumbs up. You know, whatever this social platforms thumbs up is do that because they don't make stuff off of this. YouTube tutorials are incredible, and the people that make them are the unsung heroes of our generation. If you want to move into something that's a little more monetary and costs a little bit of money, one of my favorites is use.

Ishan Musician is great because you can get on and take a majority of different music lessons from prominent musicians. You can get interaction time with some of your favorite musicians. You can learn really integral parts of the instruments that you're playing, but on top of that, you could do it all from your phone. It is subscription based. I want to say it's like minimum. If you do a whole year I think it's 15 bucks a month, which is cheaper than any guitar lesson, and it's a subscription based.

So if you want toe switch over to playing a different instrument, guess what you can, which you can't do with a normal musician. You know, if I were to go to my local music store and take guitar lessons from somebody, I wouldn't be able to be like halfway through a lesson. Now you can. We switched to piano because now he's a guitarist. There's a little bit of viability and just like flexibility with musician, but it does cost a little bit of money. So it's, you know, you gotta weigh the pros and cons yourself.

Audio books, audiobooks. Your incredible listening is a passive thing, and reading is an active thing, and I'm not saying to supplement reading books at all. But simply by switching a lot of your book reading over to podcasts, you're able to gain a ton of knowledge from those books faster. I'm sure there's a million people out there you're reading a book and you read a page and you get to the end of it and you're like, I have no idea what they said on that page. I just kind of like zoned out for a second.

I have actually never had that happen to me with an audio book, and if I do find myself starting to zone, it's actually hearing somebody else's voice. That kind of brings me back into listening to it, which that's the huge strength of audiobooks and podcasts alike. There are so many people out here that are dedicated to giving you free quality information for the purpose of better in your life, and you find those in audiobooks, podcasts, YouTube, tutorials, free streaming that is all built around knowledge and education.

And I promise you that there's so many of them. It's harder to find the you know, it's harder to narrow it down to the exact one that you want, rather than to find somebody that's actually talking on the subject you want. You're gonna find a ton of people talking about what you want. You might not find the exact lesson you're trying to learn. You might have to listen to four or five books to find that lesson along the way. You are going to gain so much knowledge that you are going to increase your worth by increasing your worth.

You deserve what you work for, that much more. And that's the biggest thing is a lot of people people get what they deserve. That's the truth of life. And so if you work and work and work and you deserve success because you've put in the hours, then you will get success. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the way you've contrast ID what you can pick up in podcasts and audiobooks versus YouTube tutorials comparing the pros and cons. I love YouTube tutorials for specific things that I want to know.

But what I miss out on by doing that if I'm going to YouTube tutorials is all the other information that might make my life easier. When you're reading a book or listening to a podcast, you're going to get all that. I don't want to say tertiary information, but the background information that as you're reading, you might pick up something and be like, Hey, you know, I never would have thought of that. Let me try that which, if you're looking for specific pieces of information, you learn those specific pieces of information and that's it so by Onley consuming YouTube tutorials as great as they are.

If that's the only thing someone consumes, that person is limiting themselves. I would say it's the same thing if somebody only reads books or listens to podcasts because you might not catch those specific things. For example, back when I was in college, I went to school for entertainment management with side focus in audio production, my audio classes, even though that's technically what I was. Therefore, I hardly learned anything. The only audio classes that I think we're actually worth it were audio theory, all my approach tools in studio classes and all that.

I learned nothing. I learned way more by going on YouTube, figuring stuff out in pro tools and interning at studios. That was just much more effective. Had I known that going in, I probably would have just taken a straight entertainment management degree and learned the audio stuff on the side, because the entertainment management classes are the ones that I look back and I'm like, Oh, that was so valuable In my last year, one of my professors told me that I'm allowed to audit classes, which basically means you sit on the class.

You don't get credit for it, but you get to take it for free. Now. Not every colleges like the some colleges still charge you just a reduced amount. But in my school it was literally free, and I just had to get approval from the professor and from my adviser, and I could take a class for free. That's huge. I wanna add on that because not only is that so incredible, but a question for our listeners, how many of you have ever gone to a producer and asked for their accreditation?

I'd be willing to bet not a single person has. So who cares if you learn something from a textbook or if you learned it from the act of doing it? Or if you learned it, as you know, auditing a class where you get to sit in, do all the homework if you want. Take all the test if you want, but at the end you don't get a letter grade and you don't get it. You know the stamp of approval from a government college that says, Oh, yeah, like you got this.

I have never once asked who trained the producers that we've worked with. But you know what? They're all phenomenal because knowledge doesn't come from college or school. Knowledge comes from you. You learn the only one that can learn is yourself. And so I just wanted to do, I mean, to interrupt. But I wanted to add that because knowledge has value, not like a accreditation is cool and necessary for some industries. But who's a better guitarist? Jimi Hendrix? Or, you know, some classically trained guitarist. It's like Who knows who knows which one is better?

They're totally different styles. This guy learned one way this guy learned the other, they're both phenomenal. It's just about acquiring the knowledge. I agree entirely. My one regret is that I didn't know about auditing classes until my senior year. I would have done that all through college, even if it was just downtime between two classes I was actually taking. I'd be like, Hey, I wanna audit this class and sit in and just chill. But what you're saying about producers is so true because it's the final product that matters.

So if you listen to their portfolio in the portfolio is good, then as long as you can lay down good tracks. They're gonna be able to do that with your music, too. That's what matters and toe. Just throw a little more in that. I know if some bands that will reach out to producer and say like, Oh, what's your gear list like, What do you use? That doesn't matter If you like what the portfolio sounds like, work with them. If you like the portfolio, why do you care what gear they use?

If they made a good mix a good song, Why do you care? There's no reason to care. What did they use, whether they use outboard or in the box, all that stuff side note, that is the best way to choose a producer. By the way, it's not about like what other people tell you or anything like that. It's about like what albums do you love and then find out who produced them and go there? You know, we've talked about this in a previous episode on how to cut down costs and diversify what you're doing.

But you don't need the Million Dollar producer to do your guitar tracking. You can use your local producer for that. Maybe they do all your tracking and you send it off to this awesome mixer who has mixed some incredible things and they send it off to somebody who has $100,000 worth of outboard gear and all you're going to Dio is let them master it. That's why if you look, you know, look at liner notes for a whole bunch of different artists. Most of them have, like, 2 to 3 producers or maybe technicians or all sorts of things that all work on a singular album.

And that's because a lot of these larger artists are doing things like this. How many of you guys have ever worked on one thing for 40 hours straight eight hours a day? By the time you get to the end of it, you're like my mind is numb. I've been listening to this song for so long. I don't even like this song anymore because I have just listened to it so many times. Take that, send it off to a different producer boom, fresh pair of years that's jumping in on that fresh fingers, somebody that hasn't been sitting staring at a computer screen for you know, eight straight days trying to get your perfect guitar tone.

By the end of that, if you're a picky artist and you're like no, that guitar tones just not right by the end of that week, your producer is gonna murder you. I think it's wonderful when we do songs we have, like three or four different producers are. Album was tracked and Spokane mixed in Baltimore and then mastered in California. And so it's like we have three different producers that technically worked on our stuff, but they all just split a third of the work, and it costs us about the same amount of money.

I think it costs us a little bit more doing it that way. But it also at the end of it, our producer was like, Man, I really like these songs like the guy who did the mixing and the mixing. He was like I wouldn't want doing a master of my own. He actually did a free master for us because he still had steam left in the tank. It wasn't like we ran him dry. We weren't in the studio for 30 days working with this guy directly. It was like no way had, like, a couple weeks there, but we went in with fully done demos.

We went and it was just like, Oh, we're gonna re amp a few things, record some live drums and then we'll do vocals, harmonies. You'll mix it and then we'll send it off to somebody to master. So I was like, We were in the studio for a month, but on Li, like nine days tracking and then the rest of the time was just us sitting with him, having a good time mastering the staff. And he never went to college for music production. He used to track on tape.

He knows how to record on a trek tape. Your knowledge can come from anywhere. Knowledge is power. Power is proficiency. It's all about working hard, getting to where you need to be by educating yourself. Absolutely. And I think over this entire topic, our main point is just learned stuff. We don't care how you learn it. As long as the knowledge that you're consuming is good. Just learn. So I think one of the biggest questions that a lot of you will be left with at the end of this episode or at least as of right now, is how can you prepare for things to come with Covic?

Everything is very uncertain. But there are certain truths and absolutes that we know beyond the shadow of doubt will be necessary with everything switching digitally from physical. Currently a website, I see far too many artists who don't have websites. It's one of my first questions that I ask my artists that I start working with even before we start working together, because I don't like working with an artist who doesn't have a website because ah website needs to be your hub for everything. If I can't google your name with dot com or dot net or dot io or dot whatever at the end, then you're not taking enough necessary steps to put your brand in front of people.

So get a website wicks. I think you could build the site for free, but you have to pay for hosting, which is like 10 bucks a month. Building a website is slim to nothing, and if you already have a regular influx of online store sales, then covering that cost is simple. $120 a year If each one of your band members can't come up with, you know, 2 to $4 per month to chip on that, then find your band members. It's that simple. On that website you need to have a bio.

Bio needs to be good. You need to read other people's by us. Um, if you don't know what a good biotics like, why don't you get on YouTube and Google? What is a good bio look like for a music for an artist? For music industry professional? What do I need to do in order to make everything look perfect? You need contact forms. You wanna have the ability to reach out directly to your fans and market directly to them through your email. If you make a new T shirt, you're not gonna get on your phone and send out 10,000 messages over Messenger and get blocked from Facebook for sending spam and blah, blah blah.

This the things that might be identified as spammy. Those need to go through your email so you need to get on mail. Chimp or what was that you had named another one? James. Yeah, I love using Mailer light. It's Ah, Mailer. And then light is l i t the new spelling. It blows mail chimp out of the water, to be honest. Yeah. Okay. So perfect. If you haven't learned either one of them, then use the one that's easier and cheaper, which is going to be male or light.

If you already use mail chimp, then don't reinvent the wheel. The point is, is you need a have direct marketing campaigns that go out. You know, it doesn't need to be super crazy stuff. If you don't have any content to release to them, let them know what you guys are doing in quarantine. Send out a monthly newsletter. Chances are this isn't how you're gonna build your audience from, you know, 10 people to 100 million because a lot of people don't use email. But it is gonna take some of those true fans who cared enough to give you their email address because they do want updates.

Maybe that's just another avenue for your most die hard fans to find you so contact forms or great you want to get people's contact. Normally, I would say put an email list at your merch table, but Since we're in this gray area, I would say Do an online contact form, Find out who's willing to send you their contact information and then add them to a list, because that's the best lead that you have consistently getting quality photos or quality media that you can release. If you have a new album and you're waiting to release it, get banners made up from your Social Media's.

If you have some great quality photos from shows that you've never put out, then put all of those inside of a folder and say them, Don't just put them out because you're gonna be using those for release plants. One of the biggest mistakes that I've seen in the music industry is somebody gets one really cool thing and you get so excited about it and they just want to share it with the world when, in all actuality, I'm sure that the songs that you hear from Taylor Swift on the radio now were written 2 to 3 years ago, and that's why they're on the radio.

That's why you know, these strong Zehr structured perfectly because they've taken time. They have educated themselves. They have prepared, they made a release plan. They made sure that they have, you know, 180 days worth of content so that people keep coming back to their social media's. They keep coming back to their sites. And that way, if they keep captive audience people paying attention to him every single day and then all of a sudden boom, here's something you can buy. Here's an exclusive piece of content. Not everybody's gonna buy it, but you're definitely gonna get those die hard fans to be like sweet.

There's only 100 of this T shirt. When I worked for escaped the fate, they did a Halloween shirt for their their Hate me tour, and there was 100 of them. The merch company messed up. I received the Halloween shirt after October 31st. The goal for the tour was to have them all sold by Halloween. Everybody was worried. They were like we spent much money on these shirts bubble about this and I said, Don't worry about it. This is my area. I'm the merch guy. I sold them in two days 100 T shirts because all I had to do was tell them that Guess What these air?

Never getting made again? Ever. Do you want to own a piece of history? That's this? A. Soon as you make something exclusive and scarce, that's when it becomes a product to a piece of memorabilia and memorabilia. To some people, it's invaluable. It's priceless. You could go anywhere and everywhere with it. That's why you have creating card shops or memorabilia shops. Or, you know, that's why people collect old cars. There's things that are unique and special to them that, you know, some people will pay an arm and a leg for.

On that same tour, Bobby, their drummer, he broke two or three symbols and he was just gonna throw them away. And I was like, Dude, no, I'll sell them at the merch table And I was able to sell his symbols for mawr than the symbol cost, and it was broken and symbols air. Not cheap? No, absolutely not. I sold a ride Cymbal like a 21 inch ride Cymbal, massive girl with a crack on the bell for $175. Was it signed? Or it was just the straight symbol. Yep, signed by Bobby.

That's awesome. for him, it was simple. He didn't have to do any work. And he was super thankful to me at the end of the tour because he was like, Honestly, man, you've worked really hard. But I was able to buy new symbols. I sold five or six symbols for him, so he was able to buy all new symbols from the money that I had brought him with that And so it was just this simple thing where I pitched it. His memorabilia was like, Look, you're never going to ever find this symbol again.

It's like played by Bobby on the city released tour, signed by him, cracked on the bell will never be used again. And some people were just like, I love that, you know, some people are like, I want to support the band, So I'm gonna buy that Some people were like, I need that symbol And so you have to define in your band what memorabilia that you're going to strive for. Merch is wonderful, but you need to have something that's exclusive to There's something that gives people the opportunity to see it as an investment.

If you don't do different colored vinyls. You're shooting yourself in the foot. You need to do vinyls do a standard color, but then you need toe print. You need to have 50 printed that are different color. It's your pre order if you buy the final before this day, you get a white one. If you buy it after this day, you get a blue one. There's 100,000 blue ones in existence. There's 50 white ones now. Instantly, people are like I want the white one. That's just simple. Anybody that understands anything about scarcity realizes that if for some reason this album becomes worth a lot of money, then the white one is going to be worth more than the blue one.

That's what we did. That's what you should do with some of your T shirts to like. Don't be afraid to make a specific tour T shirt. Find the pieces of media that you can make something exclusive now on online Merch Store is where you're gonna be pushing those. Also your website. Those need to be clean, clear, beautiful, easy to navigate. If there's not a buy it now button or an add to cart button. Or if I have to look for your price tag on something I couldn't tell you how many sites have been too.

I'm like, Oh, cool. Like, look at all these school march designs. I wonder how much they cost. The fact that I have to ask that question means you lost my business already. Because now your business is subject to my presuppositions and my opinions, and I'm gonna look at that and go. You print that on American apparel? So with no design on it, that's a $25 shirt. Now you have a design on it, plus your markup. That's probably 40 bucks, maybe your shirts. 1999. But I think it's 40 bucks, so I'm not gonna buy it in preparation.

You have to make sure that your defending against people's presuppositions and how they see things. So make sure that your prices air viewable. Make sure that you can very easily click a button that says, Buy this Right now, Any separation that your customers have from the ability to buy your product is one more step that they have to get through. One more step they have to get through is one more hurdle before you get paid, make things easy. Simple get is much of their information as you possibly can as they're willing.

Thio, you need to have a sign up form on your website as well. Things can tie into, you know, your emails, your merch and everything. And then, on top of all this, you need to have Facebook pixel and Google Analytics set up. So that way, when people do come to your website, when they do go to your online march store when they do buy something you then no. Hey, look, See this person who I have their email address and where they're from. Okay, cool. Now I'm gonna send them a direct marketing campaign with my next tee shirt because I know that they like my band.

I know that they like my brand. And they gave me their email address because it was easy. You go to the pay now page and then at the very end, once they're done, boom pop up after they've paid pop ups like, would you like to input your email address? Would you like to be a part of our mailing list? Would you like to get emails about new promotional materials that we've received. Would you like to do this? Some people will say No, that's cool. Your goal is not to be spammy.

Your goal is to find the people that do want that and market directly to them. Exactly. I think that's so incredibly important. And that's one of the things that a lot of bands don't do. I've heard artists say, Oh, I don't want to do an email list because it's all just spam Anyways, like No, it's not just spam unless you make it spam, right? Something that people want to hear And then it's not spam now, aside from the legal definition of spam, which is unwanted communication. So if somebody's opted into your email list by the legal definition, it's not spam, but most people don't view it that way.

They'll be like, This is junk and spam. I don't want it. So you have to put out content that people actively seek out. And that is what should be in your emails to your mailing list. Absolutely unique content. You don't wanna be posting the same thing on your website that you post in your email and your monthly letter or whatever for me. I see something like this. I see a Colin response, and that's kind of how I like to do. My mailing list is more of like I tease something on social media and then the answer or the solution or whatever call to action that correlates with what I talk about on social Media will then be delivered in an email.

And so you know, people that are going to your your Facebook page, like Like maybe you have some funny jokes. There's some funny skits. The personal YouTube channel is actually becoming a very, very popular thing. And with the rise of reality TV, people want to Seymour into your life. And so, like you have your really professional music videos and stuff that you put out. But there's, you know, nothing wrong with recording you guys all hanging out and cracking jokes and doing whatever seeing you in quote unquote your natural habitat.

You know, think about how many people just watched that ridiculous Tiger King documentary. They watched that because that guy had cameras filming him all throughout the day. Biggest documentary in the world right now, and you can go to Greater Winnie would. I've been there. I was there before the documentary came out. There was nothing special about it. I went through there. I felt like it was creepy. It was funny because then lo and behold, I get a message from my guitarist saying, Hey, dude, what was the name of that Wildcat park that we went to in Oklahoma?

It's like, Let me look it up. He's like, Oh, yeah, it's this. It's the place that we went in this Tiger documentary, their business. Their product was selling tickets to get into the zoo, but their documentary provided us with this incredible insight into the things that are actually going on there. Lo and behold, I'm sure that that guy is able to feed his tigers for the next year now. So it's all about delivering content to people that's unique. And that's quality. People will share laughs on Facebook all day long.

If you can get creative, you could sit down with your band and say, Hey, guys like, what are we gonna dio? I've seen bands that do skits. That's awesome. I've seen bands that do play throughs. That's cool. Maybe like hey, subscribe to our email list and you'll receive a free copy of this play through video, and we'll personalize it as well. Okay, cool. Anybody that loves music, why would they not want to get on that? So you just have to find the, like, your niche, what is really going to take your fans and truly turned them into a captive audience, especially while we're all locked down, dropped instead of our homes?

Exactly. And I want to just to sum up both of these episodes in this two part, Siri's one stale, relevant figure it out to educate yourself, and three, be prepared. Now, if you've listened to this entire episode and you still haven't listened to the previous episode, you can check that one out at Bandhive dot rocks slash 24 That's just the numbers not spelled out, and you can listen to it there or just pull it up. It should be the previous episode in whatever podcast app you're currently listening to.

Right now, it's definitely something that I think is very important right now for bands to stay relevant and focusing on that and then educating yourself so you can improve how you're staying relevant and being prepared for when the industry shifts to whatever it shifts Thio in six months a year. Who knows when more prepared you are better off your band will be when that time comes. All right. That's another episode of the Bandhive podcast in the books. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this two part series.

Just a quick reminder. If you haven't checked out Episode 24 yet that is available by going to band. I've dot rocks slash 24 If you have any questions about this episode, let us know you can do so by emailing support at Band. I've got rocks or going over to our Facebook community at Band. I've got rocks slash group and that will direct you to our Facebook group. One last thing We did mention this last week already, but if you would like some personalized individual help with getting your band ready for whatever this world ends up being post coronavirus, just head on over to band.

I've got rocks slash coaching, and you can apply to get coaching from any one of the three hosts of the band. I've podcast Thanks again for listening it really doesn't mean a lot to us, and we hope that it helps you immensely in your career will be back next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern. And, of course, as always, keep rocking.