Derek Sivers, the visionary who created CD Baby (and a very nice guy), asked some people for tips on on how to best deal with the promotional-intense music convention scene.   With South by Southwest just around the corner, here are my thoughts:

1.  Be open to fortuitous error. More often than not, the really big meeting that may have instigated your convention attendance won’t even be where your future lies.  It will be the person you bump into by the escalator or who strikes up a conversation after spilling beer on your shoes at a gig that can change your life and help your career.  You are surrounded by talented people with shared interests, don’t presume anything about anyone and be OPEN.

2.  Have a business card. It may seem old school, but after a good conversation, being able to hand a simple, tangible artifact representing yourself is helpful to people.  Make sure it looks good and that you like it.

3.  Don’t eat alone. You are surrounded by so many people with common interests and goals.   The time for quiet reflection is  when you get home.  Right now, dive into the stream of humanity.  Make yourself known (nicely), and learn about people.

4.  Pace yourself (especially drinking.)  ‘Nuff said.

5.  Don’t be shy. Insecure?  So is everyone else in music.  Fuhgeddaboutit.  This is your opportunity to make an impression.  When you meet someone, find something that interests you about them, ask questions ,and learn about what they do.   You’d be surprised how often their pursuits might benefit from your talents or vice versa (see Point 1.)    You don’t want to miss out.

6.  Follow-up. Within a week after the convention, when  you have had a good conversation with someone and exchanged information, follow up with a short e-mail reminding them of where you met (remember, like yourself, they have probably met more people than they can specifically remember and things start to blur.)  Let them know you enjoyed meeting them and ask them to keep you in mind if they need assistance with anything.   Put your contact info by your signature so they can easily cut and paste it into their own contact list.

7.  Learning one ‘big idea’ per day is a very successful convention. If you are in a meeting where you are learning something important to you, stay until you’re satisfied.   You seldom get anywhere by rushing around and cramming too many meetings into an hour.  You won’t absorb it all.

8.  You never learn by talking. Listen.

9.  That said, talk when you have something to say and then allow the other person to respond.  If you find yourself talking for more than 30 seconds at a stretch, you aren’t talking, you’re pitching/self-promoting.  The pitch can come at a later date.   Right now, engage and enjoy.

10.  Make sure your digital identifier website/myspace/blog is functioning well before the convention. When you meet people and give them your card assume they will check out your site to learn more about you and your work.  Remember, your site is representing you.   Is it readily understandable for the user?  Do all your song links work?  Make sure you have tested everything.

11.  Hit the Salt Lick.    Great barbecue and vibe about 30 miles outside Austin.  Yum.

Between writing songs, recording music, touring, paying bills, and day-to-day responsibilities, you can be on an endless wheel of activity.  Sometimes it is easy to get in the habit of throwing out random elements of your work out to the public when time permits.  One week it’s a new song.   A month later,  you complete your  bio and forward it to a college radio station.  Weeks after that, you send a song to popular music blog on a whim because you have created something you and the band are excited about.

Flickr image from user, hotdiggitydogs

When it comes to marketing your music, stop and think about the various marketing elements you’ve created  in terms of when you will use them, and how they can be most useful.  By controlling the timing of when you release information in a particular market to enable it to hit in a focused manner, you give yourself a better chance of being remembered by people.

If you are going to play in a new town, have the college radio station be receiving your music about the same time as the local music critic or hipster blog site.  Have your posters posted at the club or around town by local fans at the same time these other activities are going on.  An isolated single play of your music on a radio station may well be forgotten by someone listening in their car.  Your song playing on the same station while the driver notices a poster on a building with your band’s name and graphics on it the same day,  followed by their spotting your record review on a music website that evening,  has a much greater likelihood of getting your band on that person’s radar.  These elements would not have the same power if they each occurred months apart.

Timely, coordinated marketing efforts strengthen each other, and  increase the impression of your band among the public consciousness.

Mentor of the week: Mies van der Rohe, one of the masters of Modern architecture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe

Mies is widely credited with the saying, “God is in the Details.”  This notion is as applicable to your music as it is to architecture.  Paying attention to every detail can move a listener from “Hey, that song is pretty good” to “This music is incredible”— so compelling, in fact, that they are willing to spend their hard-earned cash to have your music as a part of their life.

Remember, like it or not, your music exists in a competitive environment. There are plenty of messages competing for your potential audiences’ time, attention, and money, whether it’s music from other bands, video games, movies, phone apps, etc.

So when you release your music into the world, make sure you are satisfied with every detail:  The arrangement, the recording, the mix, the mastering, the packaging, the artwork, the typeface on the artwork, the band photo, the words on your press release.  It all matters.

Eight million bands are currently on on www.myspace.com.  Last year, 105,000 full- length recordings were released in the US alone!  By ensuring that every aspect of your music and presentation is great—not merely good—you improve your chances of moving up the mountain of sound, getting your music noticed, and building a career.