Revisiting your goals

Have you ever been told that your goals are just pipe dreams? Have you ever been completely discouraged to the point where you actually thought about giving up on your dreams and aspirations? Remember, unless you are willing to settle; do not ever give up. My father once told me that you have to hit rock bottom before you can reach your goals… Otherwise you will never appreciate how far you’ve gone.

Remember though, that you can’t just will yourself to your goal. It will require hard work. Rome wasn’t built in a day and there is no such thing as a real overnight celebrity. Revisit your goals, and strategize. Organize events, and get people together. DIY does not mean you have to do it alone. Form a family of people close to you to do business with. Become your own business and eventually if you stick to it, your goals and aspirations will be apart of your resume.

From the mind of
Keveeno

Kevin Reeverts

Career Services Coordinator

KReeverts@ipr.edu

http://careerservices.ipr.edu/

The Institute of Production and Recording

http://ipr.edu/

Keveeno.wordpress.com

New Media Ark (under construction)

While a lot of the old heads stand in the raging rains waiting for it to pass, we have these new media sites which are becoming an ark. So when the water eventually passes over everybodys head, only those that go with whats now and keep building on their ark will survive.

As pointed in earlier posts, everybody knows about the declining record sales and feel as though their drowning in their past plans. From several counts it can be to lack of good music- But with about 40 different genre’s and many variations with the lowest near 200,000 and top over 2 million on myspace artists (myspace) I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. Some call it over satuation which could be the case. It could be the overal quality?

Well we’ll look in hindsite and see where we went wrong when we find the finished Ark of our new media, but I don’t think there will ever be a finished ark. With media and software always changing, so should the ark. Those who stick to the old ways will fail, and those who are late on whats new will just miss the ship. Those who don’t use Twitter, facebook, myspace (which is quickly becoming old), pandora radio, and/or any other startup sites that use a word of mouth approach to marketing.

Right now the best sales pitch is coming friend to friend, not billboard to billboard on the highway. New marketing is free, its just a matter of standing out, which is why the ark will never be finished, just like in DC it’ll always be under construction. Just always be on the lookout for whats new and jump on the ship before its time to build another.

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts.

The silent “I” in T(i)eam

A team is a combilation of I’s. I do not believe the phrase “there is no I in team” that means we all work together and are only as strong as our weakest link. If that is true, than every team sport would completely fail. If there is no “I” than why do we hold stats? What are we bee’s, or ants? No. We are a whole lotta “I’s” and until we realize that most DIY’s involving soley one person will fail.

Partnerships

2 guys (or girls or mix) of I’s working toward one goal. Thats 2 heads that are usually so incompatible with each other that if it was anything else it would not work. With one goal and 2 different objectives to reach it, it could work.

Groups

3 or more people toward one goal. Every person though has their own “I”, their own life. While working toward one thing they are a team but every ceo/ leader/ whoevers in charge sometimes has trouble looking at every person… as a person. That is why everything is in a bracket where their are leaders leading down to the lowest positions.

so what?

One thing when I talk to people, I stress the need to work with other people. A lot of artists love working alone, they book their own shows, they do everything themselfs. That works fine but as work builds up, so does tension and everything that goes with added workloads. I have a few artists/ Dj’s, and other people who read my blog so this is mostly to them.

Find somebody to work with, a mentor, somebody you can trust. Somebody who can help you with your load so you can be the best at the position your at. Multitasking is alright, but we need people for specific jobs otherwise your career will be considerably short or some part of your job will not be as full as it should be.

There should be I in team, because not one person can do everything… well at least anyway

Open for discussion, let me know what yall think

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

Making money off of what has become free

In what is slowly becoming a free market, music executives and musicians are finding themselves in need of finding new ways to make money. They have tried everything from Kanye West vs 50, to Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” with modest success. Kanye West outsold 50 cent 957,000 to 691,000 (Wiki), while Radiohead sold 3 million copies worldwide in physical and digital sales.

In 2007 Saul Williams attempted to use the same strategy as Radiohead. The following is from his wiki page:

“154,449 people had downloaded ‘Niggy Tardust’. Of that number, 28,322 people chose to pay the asked price of $5 USD ($141,610 USD Total)”

Let’s compare these numbers to Williams’ previous self-titled album, which sold 30,000 copies. His recent “pay what you want” release helped expand his exposure. He made less money, but reached more fans than his previous release by using the “In Rainbows” model.

All that is old news, but where has the next “big marketing idea” been for the masses? People come up with ideas for their niche markets, but worldwide sales have declined along with pop artists’ talent.

As a former hater of Lil Wayne I have learned to respect him. While he has not the best talent in my opinion, he shows emotion in his music and when he is serious you feel what he is talking about. With a constant onslaught of material for fans (mixtape after mixtape) he doesn’t give them a chance to give up. His last album, “Tha Carter 3″ sold 2.88 million copies by New Years Eve in 2008 making it the largest selling album of the year. Wayne has built a broad fan base over a long time.

So in an era of music where the value is lost, how do we make money in this industry?

Don’t give up, keep making contacts, and always make content for the fans. Money is not something you can make overnight and if you have true talent, don’t hold it in. You have to let the world hear it.

For those in the business world: Just because you can’t find “marketable artists” as available as before, it does not mean that the industry is dead. We just need something new, so find artists that sound different. As I told many people recommending artists who sound similar to Lil Wayne, “when his career is dead so will yours be”. Artists have to make their own sound and they’ll make their own path.

It’s not about strictly talent or marketing anymore, but drive as well. Never give up. For every person that does quit there’s somebody who hasn’t.

From the mind of
Keveeno Reeverts

Major/ Minor

Viacom the owner of MTV has recently cut 850 jobs in the rise of this recession. This recession has also allowed anybody to be apart of the music industry… WMG’s stock is at $2.67 a stock. People claim it is an old business plan, others say music is not a monetary market anymore. Every week I keep seeing album sales every week, but digital sales have been steadily rising. Kanye’s single sold 1.3 million times on iTunes to date (2/4/08). So is digital the answer?

In Business, sales have to show growth and improvement otherwise stocks will drop and investor confidence will drop as well. Usually when a business grows too fast, and even a slow down of growth can strike fear. There will always be this wall where all business’s hit where they have to cut some expenses to continue growth until it can not make money anymore. That is where the flaw of iPods come in. If everybody has an iPod, where can the growth be? What improvements can they make? iPod sales drop now, but that is expected and still people lose confidence in them still. Where to go when you make the top?

Music is a business like any other, and no matter how much you market something, if people don’t need it they won’t get it. You can make it all pretty and everything, but if people can get it for free they still will. Digital sales, album sales, all music sales are close to fail soon, and I believe it is an end to ‘music sales’ but not an end to music. I see labels changing to the 360 deal which I believe is great to keep income and allow labels to not give up in pushing their artists. Yes, it is still mafia tactics where if you can’t get revenue from one place, you squeeze em in other area’s. The more I study business and marketing, the more I realize that without the push of a strong team, nobody can make it. As a more entrepreneurship mindset comes across America, we are becoming more DIY (Do It Yourself). DIY can only get you so far, and with the help of the internet, everybody can DIY, but than comes the ego with that thinking your as strong as a label.

The way to a new beginning is not the end of an old. Every day should be a new beginning in expanding from what was of yesterday. People settle for one plan, one product, one everything. That is why I love places like target. They can get income from many places, they do not have everything in one product which is what most labels do. We need to learn to do more than just music, artists need to expand from just singing/ rapping whatever they do. 50 Cent invested in Vitamen water and got close to half a billion dollars.

My point is, it is the end of one sided music. We need to learn to multitask more than what we are already doing. Regular grocery stores should expand with music, and more mainstream items for kids, teens and more. Record stores should sell more band merchandise, open up a place for shows and etc. Places need to come on a major/ minor system where they are mostly this, but they also have this. Most places have that, but it needs to become more apart of the business plan, rather than just a side thought

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

Impulse music

When was the last time you purchased music off of an impulse? When you go to Target or any grocery store they have candy and other treats sitting there waiting for you to buy outside of your normal grocery list. I work part time at a grocery store and so many times while in line, people purchase those items. They pay hundreds for groceries, so what is 89 cents for a twix? 89 cents lasts 20 seconds, and 99 cents can last a lot longer, so where has the music impulse purchase went? Why is 99 cents too much for a song? Sometimes 89 cents is too much for candy so people steal it and that is given. I use to be a huge music downloader, I won’t lie. As time goes by, and I have a little more money now I can purchase songs now. I just purchased the new Anthony Hamilton song “Cool” as a impulse buy since I could not find the full song on myspace or youtube.com.

My point of this is we need a way to put impulse back into this music. If there was a way where we could sell music where there is no purchase remorse than that is the best way to do it. If we punish, then  there will be some people who feel bad and others who’ll get addicted and just download everything. There has to be something that makes people feel good enough about the purchase to make it an impulse.

What would you suggest? How would you make people feel good about music?

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

Fame? Money? Success? Pick one

The state of the industry is becoming sort of like a scientific hypothesis. You can’t just make a star overnight like you did with some of the greats from before. It is more of a guessing game with a lot more dedication and hard work from the start. Instead of just telling an artist your going to get the fame/ money/ success that comes with a rock star, you let them choose, and it becomes more like a step program.
Through youtube, fame can be reached easily. Just look at these numbers comparing 2006 to now

(Information from wiki)

August 2006- Youtube hosted about 6.1 million video’s, requiring bout 45 terabytes of storage space .

April 2008- 83.4 million video’s, requiring the amount of the bandwidth of the whole internet in 2000, costing roughly $1 million a day.

Now if you wanted your company to get any fame, getting on the front page of youtube would be great publicity. That would run you about $175,000 a day! So it does cost money to get fame, so the question is…. What is the return? Is it worth your investment? The price of fame has become cheaper over the years so the return has dropped considerable. I’ve known people to get over 1 million people to check their youtube video, and has yet to see a cent. Brings me to the next step after you get fame…. Money.

This breakdown is derived from Coolfer.com

Their breakdown is of TI’s new album, Paper Trail.

Alight so paper trail’s first week sales were 568,000, the single ‘whatever you like’ moved almost 335,000 units. Now comes in the fame aspect with Myspace. With the new Myspace music, you get around a penny a song if you’re with a major label. So if you average 1.5 million views a day, that’s $15,000 a day of extra income.

Combine sales of cd’s, single song downloads, myspace streams, and any other source and you come close to success. You’ll have fame and money, but of course happiness is most important. Success is how you define it personally, and not what anybody else tells you. I say in today’s terms, you have to pick one of the three because they don’t all come together like paper and glue like they use to. You can have a number 1 song with no income, so it is not a success. You may get a whole bunch of money from so many sources with your music from shows, but your still not in the light of fame which many die for. Success is to each their own, so fame and money may not be involved. What I am studying and working on now is a business plan to reach all three for artists I work with. There are many more steps, but like I said before it is all a scientific hypothesis that all comes back to the artists and how hard they are willing to work for. You can’t just be a internet star cause we got millions of them.. and you can’t just be the biggest local act ever if it stays local, but you have to start somewhere. No more overnight artists, it is all about the struggle of making music a career and not a hobby. It is all about picking one of the 3, or going for the long run of all of them.

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts.

Give a mouse a cookie* My little bit on myspace music

*May require a service download, a lot of commercials, and the same shit you can hear on the radio free.

Myspace music will launch for the first time in about an hour or less, so it will launch before I finish this. So I will write about what I know of the leaked version. Basically its a new music service where everything is on myspace, and you can hold up to 100 of your favorite songs (good idea) on your page. Share your music, and through what I do not know, they will pay the artist (label/ manager/ distributer/ their mama/ their rent/ and even pay for a new cookie) a sum of less than a penny for a hit. That takes a step back from the millionaire artists to thousandair artists through this method. Now being a thousandair is no joke. That can buy you chipotle and maybe a year or 2 of rent. Information on this is scattered, but this is one of the screen shots I got from Tech crunch

Now the first shows the music player looking different, can’t tell but it seems you can buy the DRM free (meaning you can transfer it anywhere) from amazon.com, and it has a add function that if added, hopefully that can pay the artist per play as well. Imagine a top hit song, added by a million people, played 20 million times… that can get the artist maybe a few thousand dollars. Which is good considering CD’s probably will not get you anything anymore, and after free… most people don’t want to pay anymore (the majority does not pay, and if you do thats good. But by majority I mean people around the teen to older teen (24 and below)). We’ll see how this goes on launch, and I call it Give a mouse a cookie* because after being able to download music for free, why would you want to listen to it with restrictions and all these rules after pretty much being able to do anything. They should start calling them Record Labels* because do they even want records as their main income anymore?

*****************

After midnight, and a few drinks… I do not see a major difference yet? Now myspace wasa site full of music before, and now I am becoming skeptical on how much of a difference maker this will be. Will it be a competitor to iTunes? Or will it fall like every other plan for music that has come out sine iTunes launch that is still not successful compared to P2P sites in sharing music, but is the best one when compared to money to the record labels as well as the artist and mouse’s.

Will launch a part 2 with a  lot more information and a lot less intoxication. Till than…

What has come of a new plan will either thrive or fail but what has come is a new plan. Until we give up, new idea’s are needed, so even though the cookie as an asterik*… and until I find more, this cookie comes with a question mark?. So before we accept this plan as the 3rd coming of jesus, we have it remember that it is something that has been thought of but never put into action. So with Myspace’s power, this has a chance at an impact and it has me excited. I will check it out more tomorrow with coffee and advil, and until more information has been found, this is…

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

*edites

From Hypebot

“At launch new MySpace Music includes:

• The new, ‘MyMusic,’ personal music management toolset
• Free and unlimited ad-supported, full-length audio streaming
• Free and unlimited playlist functionality
• Free discography and content catalogues for SONY BMG, UMG and WMG artists
• DRM-free MP3 music e-commerce downloads powered by Amazon MP3
• Ringtone e-commerce powered by Jamster”

All of this is great… but one thing I will wonder is if this will all be available for easy use from  Indie artists? Or is this the time where myspace goes completely comercial and only allows the larger players to make money, making the major label deal soooo much more apealing?

Keveeno

What is your definition of Success?

It is a race to the finish, are you in the 50 meter, 100 meter dash? Or are you in the 10 mile, 20 mile long triathlon with the race changing every few miles? It all depends on where you have your mind set as what’s a success. Do you finish an album, share with a few people and have a lot of congratulations? Make $20 on iTunes or CD baby and hope the music changed at least one persons life? Or maybe you want to live like a rock star and possible go like a rock star too? Everybody has their version of success, and each has their own road.

If you go onto CD baby, the average album sale is $340. Now that number is off a lot depending on how much you are willing to put work into it. If you only wanted to make an album that the world has a chance to hear, than your job is done. You made $20, and can now eat chipotle for a few days. If you decided to promote it yourself (depending on your talent), you can sell near the quota average of $340. Now if you put the album out, do some shows and get a fan base. This is where the numbers push the average, you sell over $5000 (CD baby had around 50 people sell over $10,000), and you become a mini rock star and you can not only eat chipotle for all 7 days of the week, but you can pay rent for a few months.

Success in definition by webster is “favorable or desired outcome.” So it all depends on what you want to do. Music is not a career for everybody, so getting recognition is not always top priority. If it is your career than recognition is of the up most importance, because how else would you be able to survive? Even if you want to work in the background of things, recognition is important to be able to show that you are willing to help people out.

So putting into consideration your definition of success, how much work are you willing to put into it?
From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

The story of limbo after graduation

*This story may or may not relate to me or anybody else,  but it will relate to the growing trend of fatigueness from the recent graduating students working their way into the music industry.

Joey graduated from a school specializing in music and production. He got a full entertainment business degree from the school, and came out with aspirations of running his own business and making a lot of money while helping out artists get what they need. He waited a month after graduation and got a great internship from an indie label, but it was non paid. Joey loved the job but he needed to pay rent. He believes that to become rich you have to have that mindset that you will get it eventually so Joey is a few thousand in debt, not counting the loan bills piling up and rent that is being paid right before late fee’s pile up. He refuses to go back home on the far west coast, because of the fact that he knows that if he does, than his music dreams will die and he will go back to the same things he did before he moved to the place he is at now.

The school he went to lead him on with high dreams of making it with a few teachers showing that it is not that easy. Now Joey also has a non music job with the music internship and that job is fatiguing him worse to the point where paying the rent and bills is all that matters. Music is slipping from Joey’s mindset when that was all that was on his mind. Its the limbo of a graduate, and what to do now? The internship is great, but the job pays the bills. If he doesn’t pay the bills, and he moves back home, than music and jobs will not be the only thing he has to worry about.

So this story I do not know if it relates to most graduates, or if it relates to anybody. Limbo happens to most after graduation, but its about the motivation and passion of the person to keep going or fall. Some fall worse than others, and some have backup plans. Joey’s one passion is music, but with bills to pay Joey is becoming passionless. Priorities are becoming less and less a priority in the fact the priority list is now skewed. Has the music industry become so fucked right now that with so many opportunities there is almost none that are open? What will Joey do when the day job takes over his passion as does to most?

But no worries. This industry is in a flux and if one takes too seriously, they got serious issues. Music is suppose to be fun, and it will be fun again. Bring it back to the days Mo Town, The hit factory where it wasn’t just a science, it was artists showcasing true talents. I want to bring that back, but true artists are some of the most difficult people to work with. Even Joey had a problem keeping his artists on check with groups breaking up, great talent singers never calling back, and when he got hard on them they just didn’t have the passion themselves. How can a person working on the business side have passion in a artist that does not have the passion themselves? Inspiration is needed in music, for if you lose that, than whats the point of doing it?

Joey on the side of working with the internship and job, is putting what he does best on a list to try and figure what he can truly offer these artist other than connections and a dream. He is good at speaking individually to an artist but lacks at putting the ax down when its needed. Planning has always been a plus because of how he was raised, but finishing up and making sure others follow is another thing. Joey is now looking for motivated artists outside of genre’s he has grown comfortable with to grow comfortable with them. Joey knows not to quit, and knows that being limbo is never a reason to quit your passion. Its a matter of setting new priorities and not sticking with plans that will not work anymore, sometimes it’s also getting your head out your azz and going beyond any comfort zone you have set yourself.

This limbo is a bubble that will either burst or float depending on the winds surrounding it. Joey will either crash under pressure or continue strong, because a quote from Tupac’s a rose that grew from concrete, “you not gon’ say, “Damn, look at all the scratches and marks on the rose that grew from concrete”, You gon’ be like, “Damn! A rose grew from the concrete?!”" The other quote, “it is not the destination but the journey” is another one that can describe limbo. No matter how you put it, life is not easy for anybody. The rich have mental issues, the middle class have a little bit of every issue, and the poor have to overcome so many obstacles that it’s amazing what people can achieve. Some people have limbo for life, so overcoming this bubble of a limbo shouldn’t be so difficult but it takes the best out of people. Just never give up on your passions, because even if you do… your heart never will.

From the mind of

Keveeno

If you read this and you have a similar story, make sure to put it in the comment section.

Limbo affects 76% of the population, and if you have a limbo lasting longer than 4 years please see a doctor for it may cause a unsafe drop of well being over the years.