All You Need to Know About the Music Business 2 How to Pick a Team GETTING YOUR TEAM TOGETHER Let''s talk about the professionals you''ll need to maximize your career and net worth. The main players are your: 1. Personal manager 2. Attorney 3. Business manager 4. Agency 5. Groupies With respect to number 5, you''re pretty much on your own. As to the others, let''s take a look: BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY Before we talk about the specific players, let me share a bit of personal philosophy.

(If "share" is too California for you, try "Let me tell you some of my personal philosophy," or the New York equivalent, "Yo, listen up, I''m talkin'' to you.") Take a hard look at some facts: 1. You are a business. Even though your skills are creative, you''re capable of generating multimillions of dollars, so you have to think of yourself as a business. 2. Most artists don''t like business. This is not to say you aren''t good at it. Some artists are unbelievably astute in business.

However, those folks are the minority, and whatever their love and skill for business, their love and skill for creating and performing are much bigger. So even if you''ve got the chops to handle your own business, it''s not the best use of your time. 3. Success hides a multitude of sins. This is true in any business, from making widgets to making records. If you''re successful, you can get away with sloppy operations that would bankrupt you if times were bad. For example, putting all your pals on the payroll, buying lots of non-income-producing assets (such as houses, jets, and other things that cost you money to maintain), as well as an overindulgence in various legal and illegal goodies, can easily result in a crash and burn if your income takes even a small dip, much less a nosedive. You can make more money by cutting costs than you can by earning more income (see page 417 for proof of this), so the time to operate efficiently is NOW, not later.

4. Your career is going to have a limited run. Don''t take offense at this--"limited" can mean anything from a year to fifty years, but it''s going to be limited. In most other careers, you can expect to have a professional life of forty years plus, but as an entertainer in the music business, this rarely happens. And the road is strewn with carcasses of aging rock stars who work for rent money on nostalgia tours. So take the concentrated earnings of a few years and spread them over a forty-year period, and you''ll find that two things happen: (a) the earnings don''t look quite as impressive; and (b) this money may have to last you the rest of your life. It''s certainly possible to have a long, healthy career, and to the extent you do, the need for caution diminishes radically. However, even the best entertainers have slumps, and very few have lengthy careers.

So it''s best to plan as if your career isn''t going to last, then be pleasantly surprised if it does. Setting yourself up so that you never have to work doesn''t stop you from working all you like--it just becomes an option, not an obligation. HIRING A TEAM The way you pick your professional team will either set up your career and finances for life, or assure you a place on the next Electric Prunes tour. So be very careful and pay attention personally to the process of assembling them. I know you don''t like to deal with this stuff, but it''s your career and your money, and you have to do it every now and then. If you pick the right people, you can set your life on automatic pilot and just check up on it periodically. If you pick the wrong people and set it on automatic pilot, you''ll smash into a mountain before you know what happened. Pre-team Strategies Since you wouldn''t open a store without something to sell, before you start assembling a team, you want to be sure your music is ready for the big time.

And how do you know when it''s ready? You ask your tummy. Do you believe, in your gut, that your music has matured to the point that you''re ready for a professional career? If the answer is yes, then you''re ready. (Tummies are reliable indicators once we learn how to listen to them and dismiss the goblins that yell, "You''re a phony and nobody wants you." Even the superstars have these goblins; they''ve just learned to ignore them.) The first thing is to record your music. The recording doesn''t have to be expensive or elaborate--with the advent of relatively inexpensive multitrack recorders, synthesizers, and computer recording software, you can get a very professional sound in your bedroom. The important thing is to capture your energy, enthusiasm, and drive. You know what I mean.

A word about what kind of music to make. It''s simple--you make the music that moves your soul. No one has ever had a serious career by imitating others, or trying to guess what the public wants. And I''ll tell you a secret: What the public wants is someone whose music resonates from their heart. Doesn''t matter whether you''re the commercial flavor of the month, or an obscure blend of reggae and Buddhist chants. All the superstars I''ve known have a clear vision of who they are and what their music is. So you''ve got a killer recording and you''re ready to boogie. Next question is whether you want to sign to a record company or do it yourself.

We''ll discuss that question later (on page 70), but the first things you do are the same whether you''re looking to sign to a company or go it on your own--namely, you have to build a fan base and, also build what the industry calls "a story." A story is something that comes after the line "You won''t believe what''s happening with this artist!" In other words, something that sets you apart from the pack. So how do you get yourself a fan base and a story? A lot of artists start by playing whatever local gigs they can get. This is not only to attract fans, but also to tighten up their musical chops and get experience playing live. At the shows, get your fans to sign onto your email list. It''s crucial to build a database (as we''ll discuss in a minute), and many artists give away something (pins, stickers, etc.) to everyone who signs up. Even if you only add a few new folks at each gig, you can eventually get a following that spreads the word and grows itself virally (assuming your music doesn''t suck).

Another way to build the database is by giving a free song to anyone who signs onto your email list for the first time. There''s software to capture email addresses in exchange for songs at places like CASH Music (www.cashmusic.org), FanBridge (www.fanbridge.com), and Bandcamp (https://bandcamp.com). Of the three, CASH Music has the advantage of being an open source (and free), as it''s based on the principle that everyone donates resources and uses the platform to help other artists.

You can also expand your base by giving away songs in exchange for Tweets on Twitter, using something called "Tweet for a Track" (Tweet for a Track tools are located at the cleverly named www.tweetforatrack.com.) If you want a one-stop shop for all these schemes, sites like BandPage offer a full set of tools (www.bandpage.com). Once you have a list, stay in touch with your fans on a regular basis. Direct them to your sites on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, Tumblr, Bandcamp, Instagram, Meerkat, Periscope, etc.

, and promote yourself through email and text messaging. When you contact the fans, have something interesting to say. Give away tickets. Give away songs. Give away merchandise. Release video footage of yourself. Raffle off your collection of sponges. Don''t be afraid to tell your fans what you want them to do: Come to a show.

Email clubs saying they want to see you. Write about you on their Facebook pages. Tell their friends about your music. Write to bloggers about you. And speaking of bloggers, it''s important for you to write to bloggers yourself. A lot of them love to hear from artists who genuinely like their blog (insincere kissing-up doesn''t work, unless you''re really good at it). A good database can also put your booking strategy on steroids. Facebook Insights and Google Analytics let you see where your fans are clustered, so you can strategically target those markets rather than just booking gigs in East Bumbleton and hoping the farmers show up.

A great way to build visibility is by getting your songs placed on TV shows or in commercials. Sites like Music Dealers (www.musicdealers.com), Pump Audio (www.pumpaudio.com), Jingle Punks (www.jinglepunks.com), Secret Road (www.

secretroad.com), and Zync (www.zyncmusic.com) can help with that. You won''t likely get much money for the use of your recording, but you''ll spread your music to a wider base. However, if it''s a big enough use, and you wrote the song, you can earn some decent monies from airplay of the TV show or commercial (these are called performance royalties, which we''ll dis.