Sing for Your Supper

A DIY Guide to Playing Music, Writing Songs, and Booking Your Own Gigs

David Rovics

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781604860146
• eBook ISBN: 9781604861587
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation

Succinct and to the point, David Rovics demystifies the very different skills necessary to cultivate the arts of songwriting, guitar-playing and tour booking. In an era when the truly independent record label is virtually a thing of the past, Rovics explains how it's possible to make a living as a recording artist without a label. At a time when the corporate record industry is suing music fans for sharing music, Rovics explains why the internet is good for independent artists, and how to utilize its potential. For those hoping to get a major record deal and become rich and famous, look elsewhere. But if you're looking to make a living as an independent artist, this pamphlet is a must-read.

DEVELOPING A FOLLOWING

To succeed as a musician you have to get started doing tours and playing original music, and to do so you need a following. There are many ways to develop this, and there is no one way that’s the best way to do it—the best way is to follow several directions at once, as with so many things. If you follow these different strands I would venture to say that it is a fairly sure route to some kind of success. Of course, even if you are very good at what you do, this success is likely to be limited if you don’t have a big record deal, and probably won’t result in you getting rich and famous by Hollywood standards.

Also, if you’re not really good at what you do, following my advice on finding gigs and promoting your music won’t help much. This is because the most fundamental thing about getting anywhere in this business on a DIY level is your dependence on your fans. They are everything. It helps immensely if you have some basic abilities in terms of booking gigs and engaging in limited promotional efforts, but what it really comes down to is your fans, the people who like your music. If people like it, they’ll tell their friends. “Viral marketing” is the key—word spreads if the word is good, but it helps to make it easy for that to happen.

PLAYING ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE

It’s important to know where you’re at in your career and to behave accordingly. If nobody knows who you are, a well-publicized gig might only draw ten people. If some people know who you are, the same amount of publicity can bring in ten times as many people. If nobody knows your music yet, you have to admit this to yourself and realize that it’s not time to organize a national tour. It’s time to keep your day job (unless you prefer to live on the streets and eat out of dumpsters while pursuing your music career—your choice) and play as many free gigs as possible, for the biggest crowds possible.

Go to open mikes. Listen to the other musicians as well; don’t be a single-minded stage hog. If there’s a protest or a conference or some other event like that happening, offer to sing a couple songs at it. If at first you get lame spots at these events, or get turned down entirely, don’t be discouraged.

PLAYING AT RALLIES: REALITY & ETIQUETTE

The standard program for a protest rally goes something like this…First the crowd gathers starting at around 10 am, say, and the program on the stage begins. By noon the march begins. A couple hours later the march returns to the site of the rally or a different site, and there’s a second, post-march rally.

You can generally tell which parts of the programs are more valued by the organizers based on the times when they’re happening. In a program like the one I’ve just described, the most important stuff will go on from 11 am to noon, when the crowd will inevitably be biggest. Less important stuff will happen before 11 am, and still less important stuff will happen after the march is done. As experienced organizers know, marches often don’t go as planned, and even when they do, many of the people who were there for the initial rally and march often don’t show up to the post-march rally.

The best time to play is during the hour or so before the march leaves, that’s when there should be lots of music, and maybe some good speakers, too…and to ensure you (or indeed anyone else) are invited to play again, play only for the time-slot they ask you to fill. if they tell you to sing for 10 minutes, play two songs. If at that point they tell you to do another, then do another, but don’t play for longer than you’re told.

Be a Voice for Music and Culture—For musicians and other people in the cultural field, it’s important to understand how valuable what we do is, both in general, and specifically at rallies, conferences, and other such events.

Along with getting media attention, impressing the powers-that-be and educating the public, one of the points of having a rally or other such event is to truly rally the people, to impact the hearts and minds of those in attendance. The power of culture to affect people in this way cannot be overstated. If you talk to people who were at the forefront of the civil rights movement they will tell you that if it wasn’t for the music, they might have turned and ran when they saw the riot police and their dogs and water cannon. If you ask people how they got involved with activism of one sort or another, at least half the time it seems their answer will be names like Phil Ochs, Rage Against the Machine, Chumbawamba or a style of music like punk rock. The music is what got them started, and the music is often at the core of what keeps them going.

However, for one reason or another, music is often the last thing to be added to a program, the first thing to be cut, and the element which is given the lowest priority. It’s fine to have music playing as a rally is gathering steam or as the marchers are leaving for the march, etc. But that’s what canned music is for. If there’s going to be live music, then just as with live speakers, there should be a certain respect for the music itself, just as for the speakers. Nobody would ask a speaker to speak while the crowd is gathering or walking away. It would rightly be considered disrespectful. If you are asked to sing at a rally or you are asking organizers to sing at one, you can do your little part not only to advocate for your participation in the event, but to advocate generally for the importance of including culture in the event.

BE AN OPENING ACT

Offer to open for more established musicians if they’re playing in your area. If they’re playing somewhere you can manage to get to, offer to open for them there. If they tell you to talk to the venue owner or the gig organizer, do that. Accept money if it’s offered or just play for free. Union rules don’t apply yet—they only kick in (according to my moral compass) after you’ve got a following.

BE AN ACCOMPANIST

Join a band, if you’re able to play an instrument well in that context. Meet people on the road, share your music with them, open for the band here and there if possible with your own material, play at open mikes and other events that you can fit in while you’re on tour with the band.

PROMOTING AND REGISTERING YOUR CD

One time when I came out with a CD, I sold a single copy for $12; but if people bought two copies, I’d sell them together for $10 (in other words, $5 each) with the encouragement that people used the second copy to give to a radio programmer or some other person in the music business they may know. This strategy definitely worked at least as well as spending thousands of dollars on advertising.

Make it easy for people with radio shows to get your CD. If they ask for one, send it. If you have a friend who knows somebody at a station, ask your friend to communicate with the radio person they know and send your CD wherever they tell you to send it. If you’re sending CDs out cold to radio people you don’t personally know, take the shrink wrap off and make it interesting. They’re inundated with CDs. You’ll be lucky if they even listen to the first 30 seconds of the first track. Your CD should look interesting. I hear even making the packaging you send it in look interesting can make a huge difference.. And those first 30 seconds better be interesting. Whenever possible do live appearances on radio—easiest to manage on community radio. Meet the staff and other programmers when you’re there.

Your best promotion for a new CD is doing shows. That’s where in all likelihood you’ll sell the vast majority of them. You will hopefully develop more and more audience from the web, but many of those people first hear about you because somebody came to a show.

You should always set up your CD table before your show. It should ideally be in a place everybody has to walk past, but where people won’t be creating a bottleneck if they stop and look. Make the CD display as wide as possible, so people don’t have to reach around each other in order to get at the CDs. People are more likely to buy CDs if there are lots of them on the table. This is called the cornucopia effect, so put out stacks of them. Have a nice-looking email list with a bold header and such, people are much more likely to sign that than a scruffy notebook with “email list” handwritten at the top of the page. Tie a pen to the clipboard with a string so nobody steals it to sign petitions at another table.

If possible, have someone with you at the CD table, so if you get engaged in conversations with people who want to talk to you about your music, or whatever else, there is still someone at the table who can take money for CD purchases. Have a good marker with you to sign CDs; and don’t act embarrassed about signing CDs. It’s embarrassing enough for many people to ask for a signature, but it’s obviously meaningful to them.

As far as royalties go for independent artists getting radio-play, my impression is that BMI is way better than ASCAP. While the media is largely wrapped up in the US, I find there’s still a chance for airplay elsewhere in the world. About 90% of my royalties come from the UK. When you come out with a CD, sign up to BMI and register the songs on their fairly user-friendly website. As far as I understand the law (which is not much), the songs are still yours to do whatever you want with them, including registering them Creative Commons, which I also recommend. When you register your songs with BMI you’re not selling them, giving them away, or anything like that. You’re just allowing airplay of your songs to result in you getting checks for it, that’s how the system works.

Although I am a big advocate for providing all of your songs for free download on your website, there are always people searching for songs on iTunes or elsewhere who will not think to look for free ones or who just want to support the arts by paying for them this way. Talking to other professional musicians I know who do not put up all of their MP3’s for free, they tend to get somewhat more paid downloads than I do. But this represents a tiny fraction of the number of downloads I get when I make the songs available for free.

The easiest way I’ve found to make your music available for download is through www.cdbaby.net. They also have lots of useful advice, and they charge a reasonable rate to sell your CDs through them as well. Also, once you have a CD on their site for sale, it’s just a matter of perusing their website and clicking a few things to get all of your music up for sale through iTunes, SnoCap and other services. Much easier than registering yourself through these services, and CDBaby charges next to nothing for this convenience.

BUILDING A PRESENCE ON THE WEB

Playing your music live is one of the best ways to get that vital following, but you need to make it easy for the word to spread. You have to have an easy-to-find website, like www.davidrovics.com. If people can spell your name they can find your website. You have to maintain and grow your email list. You have to have a page on MySpace, lots of free, full-length MP3’s for download, and videos of you singing live for folks to find on YouTube.

Buzz has always been where it’s at. You want people talking about you. A major record deal and millions of dollars can create buzz on just about anything, but even then, it has to be good for it to keep going long-term. With all the power of the internet you may never match the kind of buzz that conventional publicity can generate when they spend enough money on it, but you can certainly do far more for free than could ever have been imagined by record executives a couple of decades ago.

The Argument for Free Downloads
Sales are down massively for the major labels. The age of the internet is democratizing the airwaves to a significant degree. The major labels, while still making lots of money and still having almost exclusive access to the major media, still feel threatened. They have retaliated with a sustained propaganda blitz aimed at convincing people in the US and around the world that downloading music for free is essentially a criminal activity.

Still, my impression is that overall the internet—and the free sharing of culture that has so far been inherent to the internet—has been overwhelmingly positive for most artists. For most professional, independent artists who are locked out of “conventional” media and publicity, overall the internet has been a very positive development. I would also suggest that the artists who have made lots of material easily available for free download have benefited more than those who have not. This is one of today’s key issues for all musicians, so I have devoted much more t...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CASTING THE SPELL
• MASTERING THE TECHNICAL SHIT
• DEVELOPING A FOLLOWING
• FINAL WORDS
• THE RIAA VS THE WORLD