SELF-PUBLISHING - GETTING YOUR SONGS OUT THERE

This blog post’s focus is on self-publishing rather than the traditional means is very relevant to where I’m at right now. I have 17 recordings and have published them both traditionally and on my own through a self-publishing company. You may laugh, but the first recordings were on cassettes. Remember those? At least they weren’t 8-Tracks. Self-publishing is so less expensive and easier to control.

In Kimberly Craft’s book, Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution, is very informative on how to go through the process of making a recording yourself and getting it out yourself (self-publishing it). “Thanks to recent technological innovations, it is also now possible for many composers, producers and performers to self-publish their music and audio material—whether for serious commercial gain or simply as a means of advancing their careers” (Craft, 2016, p. 62).

In looking at a few self-publishing companies (Createspace, TuneCore, The Orchard, and CD Baby), I like CD Baby the best. I have published three albums with them and it has been pretty easy. Their website gives a brief description of who they are: “CD Baby is based in Portland, Oregon (land of microbrews, overcast skies, and constant creativity). We're a company run by artists, for artists. Almost everyone here is a musician, writer, filmmaker, painter, dancer, tinkerer, or vegetable juggler!” (CD Baby, ¶ 2). They work with Disc Makers to make it a “one-stop-shop” to get an album out to the public. Once you record an album and get artwork for the cover, you send it in to Disc Makers if you want an actual CD. Then CD Baby does the distribution both digitally and physical CDs. You can check out two of my recordings on CDBaby (also on iTunes and Spotify).

As a suggestion to my colleagues, if you venture to go with CD Baby, there are two routes for duplicating CDs and taking advantage of the Print-On-Demand (POD) feature. If you want to make many CDs (like 1,000 of them), then you should go with “duplication,” which means they use a faster means of burning the music onto the disc. This costs less for a large number of CDs. But, if you only sell 50 to 100 over a month, then you should choose to “replicate” the copies, which means they burn copies onto CD-Rs. Both are good quality, but it has a different price break.

I hope you've enjoyed this blog and experience the joy of getting your songs out to the public.

~ Reggie

References:

CD Baby (n.d.), CD Baby : The Biggest Little Online Record Store. Retrieved January 20, 2016, from: http://www.cdbaby.com/about

Craft, K. (2016). Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution (Third). USA.

BUSINESS PLAN DEVELOPMENT – TWO EXPERTS

In the process of putting together a business plan for my Entertainment Business Master of Science degree through Full Sail University, I’d like to look at two experts in the area of entertainment business: John Lasseter and Brad Bird. Though they may not be your typical business plan experts, their experience speaks for itself.

John Alan Lasseter (born January 12, 1957) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, producer and the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios. He is also the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. Lasseter began his career as an animator with The Walt Disney Company. After being fired from Disney for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on CGI animation. The Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986. Lasseter oversees all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. He directed Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Cars (2006), and Cars 2 (2011). In 2006, Disney bought Pixar and since 2007, Lasseter also oversees all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' (and its division DisneyToon Studios') films and associated projects as executive producer.

Phillip Bradley "Brad" Bird (born September 24, 1957) is an American film-maker, known for both animated and live-action films. Milt Kahl, one of Disney’s legendary Nine Old Men, mentored him. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts alongside John Lasseter and Tim Burton. Soon after that, Bird worked as an animator for Disney. He left to direct his first animated feature, The Iron Giant (1999), and rejoined Lasseter at Pixar in 2000, where he developed his second picture, The Incredibles (2004), and his third picture, Ratatouille (2007). In 2011, Bird transitioned to live-action filmmaking with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. His latest film, Tomorrowland (2015), starring George Clooney, was released in May 2015.

The key component to a great business plan, according to Lasseter, is quality. When he returning to Disney in 2006, he told everyone, “Quality is the Best Business Plan" (Grover, 2006). Everything Lasseter does, he does well…the best quality he can achieve. This is something I want to bring to the work I do. I want to develop a business plan that exudes quality.

The key component to a great business plan, according to Bird, is creative ideas. Though he would agree that quality is important, the right ideas are what gives the story life. He said, “No matter how much money you throw at an idea, if the concept is flawed in the first place, you end-up with high quality but dull movies -- which had helped cause the decline of the Disney Animation studios” (Sutton, March 2009). As Bird described his brief career at Disney, "I went to Disney at a time where they were doing really beautiful quality of really boring ideas.  That was right after the great masters had left and I basically got fired for, quote, rocking the boat" (Sutton, March 2009).

These two key components, quality and creative ideas are very important when considering a business plan. I plan on implementing them in my plan as I charge forward the next two months to complete this Entertainment Business Master of Science degree.

References:

Grover, Ronald (March 10, 2006). "The Happiest Place on Earth – Again". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved March 6, 2016 from: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2006-03-09/the-happiest-place-on-earth-againbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

On John Lasseter (2016), Retrieved March 6, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lasseter

Retrieved March 6, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Bird

 Sutton, Bob (January 4, 2009). McKinsey's Most Popular Interviews of 2008: Brad Bird and Mitchell Baker. Retrieved March 6, 2016 from:

http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/mckinseys-most-popular-interviews-of-2008-brad-bird-and-mitchell-baker.html

Sutton, Bob (March 14, 2009). "Quality is the Best Business Plan," Pixar's John Lasseter. Retrieved March 6, 2016 from:

http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/quality-is-the-best-business-plan-pixars-john-lasseter.html

MUSIC AND ITS REDEMPTIVE POWER

There have been numerous times I’ve felt discouraged and music has lifted my soul. At age 14, my mom had died. Music was my therapy to help me through the tough emotions of loss. I sang in my school and church choirs, played trombone in the marching band, and played the guitar for 5 hours a day. I even began writing my own songs, expressing my heart and feelings through music. Even today, music is a part of every aspect of my life and still brings relief and encouragement.

Robert Vijay Gupta also experienced music as a redemptive force. He is an Indian-American violinist and musical activist. He joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at the age of 19, after completing a Master’s degree in Music from Yale University, and a Bachelor’s in biology from Marist College. TED.com says it well, “Gupta is passionate about education and outreach, both as a musician and as an activist for mental health issues. He has the privilege of working with Nathaniel Ayers, the brilliant, schizophrenic musician featured in ‘TheSoloist,’ as his violin teacher.”

In this TED-Talk video, Robert Gupta talks about a violin lesson he once gave to Nathaniel Ayers, a brilliant, schizophrenic musician, and what Gupta learned in the process. Nathaniel Ayers was a double bassist who graduated from Juilliard School. He had a series of psychotic episodes in his 20’s and was treated with Thorazine (used for treating certain mental or mood disorders like schizophrenia). He dropped out of Juilliard and ended up homeless on Skid-Row in downtown Los Angeles 30 years later.

Gupta was able to give a violin lesson to Ayers, which affected both of them. Through playing music and communicating about music together, Gupta discovered that Ayers was transformed, exposing a brilliant musician, experiencing sanity in those moments. Music acted like a medicine for Ayers, a healing balm bringing him back to a place of creativity and rationality.

At the end of the TED-Talk, Gupta says music caused Ayers to “take his thoughts and delusions and shape them, through his imagination and creativity, into reality.” This is the essence of art – taking our emotions and expressing them through music! “This is what reaches us, moves us, inspires us, and unites us.” Watch this video here and comment below with your thoughts on music as a redemptive power.

CREATIVE CONTENT - GETTING IT TO THE PUBLIC

It is such a joy to be able to share my music with others and hear from them that it is enjoyable, beautiful, unique, inspiring, and even educational. Most people who are creative want to produce something that is an expression of themselves and appreciated by others. But, once it’s created (creative content), how do you get it out to the public? This is known as publishing and distribution, a topic I’m covering this month in my Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution class at Full Sail University. It is rare that anyone would create something just for his or her own enjoyment. Usually, they want to share it with others. This is certainly what I want to do with my music.

Creative content is anything that you create whether it is music, art, software, a book, a TV show, an APP, curriculum, or a poem. If you created it, it is considered your creative content. First, it is important to protect your creation through copyright registration. With songwriting, once a song has been written down, it is copyrighted and published. But, you can choose to hire a publishing organization or songwriting agent to get it to the public or you can self-publish your creation in getting it out to the public. The Harry Fox Agency is the leading provider of rights management, licensing, and royalty services for the U.S. music industry and was established in 1927 by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) as an agency to license, collect, and distribute royalties on behalf of musical copyright owners.

When I write a song and feel it is something I’d like to share with others, I put it on an album (recording it myself), copyright the album as a work, protect it through BMI (a Performing Rights Organization), publish it myself by making copies of the album through Disk Makers and distributing it digitally and physically through CD Baby. Disk Makers is known as a Print-On-Demand (POD) company that enables me to make as many copies as I’d like. Because I’m publishing it myself, I have more control. CD Baby distributes my digital recordings on iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, Amazon, and others. I also distribute my recordings, music books and other products through my website (heartfeltmusic.org) and digitally through Gumroad.com (an aggregator). I may not have the breadth of distribution an outside company would have, but I love the personal and immediate connecting I have to the people listening to my music. Plus, I’m saving money by not paying a middle-man.

Check out my songs on CD Baby and iTunes! Please, leave a comment if you have any questions on getting your own creative content out to the public.

MUSIC & ENTERTAINMENT LAW

Entertainment Law is so important in the music industry. It’s the business foundation holding up all the artistic endeavors both individuals and companies embark on. Signing contracts, committing to service, borrowing money, or using other people’s intellectual property are some of the issues addressed by Entertainment Law. I’ve selected three current articles relating to Copyright Law, Trademark Law, and Patent Law. Each are in the music industry.

The first article has to do with Copyright Law. On March 10, 2015, the jury reached a decision in the Blurred Lines trial and awarded the estate of Marvin Gaye $7.4 million. “The case centered around allegations from the estate that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, when writing their hit song, infringed upon Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give it Up” (Bailey, 2015). This has been going on for a couple of years and will probably continue. I think this is significant because it has to do with the written music and not the performance. Though someone wants to get an “oldie” sound, they have to be careful not to copy something without permission.

The second article has to do with Trademark Law. The superstar rapper and wealthy hip-hop musician filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the creators of a humorous new Kanye West-themed digital currency called "COINYE" that is not something Kanye West gave permission to do. “The logo for the currency, which is bought and sold over the Internet, features a cartoon version of West wearing his signature ‘shutter shades’” (Dillon, 2014). Kanye says this is hurting his brand and wants them to stop using his brand to promote their company. It turned out that Kanye buried the Internet coin parody only months after it started (Schneider, 2014). It’s important to Trademark you name and not let someone try to misuse it.

The third article has to do with Patent Law. In February, a federal jury in Texas ordered Apple to pay $532.9 million to Smartflash LLC to compensate the company for infringing on three Smartflash patents in Apple's iTunes music software. Smartflash claims that Apple violated its patents in iTunes relating to digital rights management, inventions related to data storage, and managing access through payment systems. Apple is taking this to higher courts, but it looks like they will have to pay. This is a reminder of how important it is to check existing patents and to establish your own. However, I don’t think Apple will be set back much considering it makes more money every month ($25billion) than the entire recorded music industry does in a year ($15billion).

References:

Bailey, Jonathan (March 11, 2015). Living in Blurred Times. Retrieved on November 29, 2015 from: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/03/11/living-in-blurred-times/https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/03/11/living-in-blurred-times/

Dillon, Nancy; Beekman, Daniel (January 14, 2014). Kanye West sues COINYE, themed digital currency, over trademark infringement. Retrieved on November 29, 2015 from: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/anye-west-sues-coinye-themed-digital-currency-trademark-infringement-article-1.1579164

Ingham, Tim (February 25, 2015). Apple ordered to pay $532.9m in iTunes patent infringement trial. Retrieved on November 29, 2015 from: http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/apple-ordered-to-pay-532-9m-in-itunes-patent-infringement-trial/

Ingham, Tim (January 29, 2015). Apple makes more money every 3 weeks than the entire recorded music industry does in a year. Retrieved on November 29, 2015 from: http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/apple-makes-more-money-every-3-weeks-than-the-entire-recorded-music-industry-does-each-year/

Schneider, Marc (July 17, 2014). Kanye West Buries Coinye With Lawsuit Victory. Retrieved on November 29, 2015 from: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6190174/kanye-west-buries-coinye-with-lawsuit-victory

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS WALSH

I had the privilege of interviewing Chris Walsh, the Executive Director of Tonto Rim Christian Conference Center in Payson, Arizona. He works for Transformational Ministries, a subsidiary of American Baptist Church, USA. They have 3 conference centers and 165 churches. We sat down to discuss his experience in negotiating and deal making. There are plenty of negotiation opportunities for a conference director with employees, visiting groups, and conferees. Since I am the Executive Director of Heartfelt Music Ministry, I knew what he had to say was something I could easily apply.

We discussed three issues at the heart of negotiations. The first one was separating the people from the problem. Walsh stated that you really do have to keep the person separated from the problem. His advice was to deal with facts, trying to leave out emotions in order to be fair and balanced. Be objective in your processing. “In the process of negotiating, keep the goals in mind. When both parties see the goal, sometimes they catch it themselves how they are not helping get to the goal.” This topic, as well as the following ones, are covered in an excellent book called Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Fisher, 2011).

The second issue was dealing with positional bargaining tactics. A clear definition is by Brad Spangler, “Positional bargaining is a negotiation strategy that involves holding on to a fixed idea, or position, of what you want and arguing for it, and it alone, regardless of any underlying interests.” Walsh told me sometimes he just couldn’t give them what they want. Haggling over the price of something is the most common experience of this. Is there some information you could give them that would help them see what they could get if they were even a little flexible? Assess how tight they are going to hold to their strong position, talk with them, then decide if they are really set or if they may budge on their position.

The third issue we covered was working toward mutual benefit. Walsh explained one of the ways he would do this, when a group would want to use their facilities, was to start with the lowest base price then add on features. Their base line for the camp is 150 people for the weekend. Base line for the visiting group includes many things from sound equipment, lodging, meals, etc. Adding on amenities is the mutual benefit. Unfortunately, some people will nit-pick and haggle about the price for the amenities. This is very frustrating and whittles down the feeling of helping each other. Walsh said going back to the facts and goals would help both parties get through the negotiations.

It was a joy to share experiences and laugh at some of the crazy things that happen when dealing with people and trying to reach an agreement in working together. Chris Walsh can be contacted at director@tontorimcc.com.


Resources:
Roger Fisher and William Ury. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 3rd ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).

ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE

Marty Nemko was speaking on KGO radio (he’s the Career/Education/Life Advice guy) and brought up the issue of a lack of ethics in society and the workplace. Since I was driving home from a concert in Santa Rosa, I gave him a call. I agree that we need to teach our youth about ethics and train parents to pass it on to their children. But training in ethics should be more than merely identifying good and bad behavior. We should include “consequences,” “resolve,” and “hedges.” If we can somehow give people a vision of the consequences of their actions, such as the destruction it would cause, it would help motivate them to make a resolve to act with integrity (such as “I will never cheat on my wife, but will reserve my romance for only her”). Then, we can think of what “hedges” to place around us to protect us from bad behavior (such as accountability with friends).
 
Unfortunately, there is a lack of ethics in the Christian church as well. Too often we hear of pastors who are stealing money, cheating on their wives, or lying. The Ashley Madison scandal has been an eye opener catching a number of leaders cheating on their wives. Ethics in the workplace is so important and has a ripple affect down the road. What do you think?