Are you called to minister in music?

Weigh your call and be settled that it is from the Lord. If He is leading you in this direction, He will provide EVERYTHING you need to expand His kingdom through music. You do not need fame and fortune to expand His kingdom. You can start right away.

Many years ago, Don did a very small concert years ago in Wyoming. Less than 50 people were there. Recently, a man named Pat Kline came to Don’s home. He is the founder of Asian Vision, a ministry which has led multiplied thousands to the Lord. Pat told Don that he had given his life to Jesus at that concert in Wyoming. That is the Lord’s economy. Music ministry has NOTHING to do with big crowds, big contracts and big money. It has everything to do with your willingness to hear God and follow him.

Do not hunt for a recording deal with a big company. This advice comes not only from our experience, but also from years of hearing the experiences of many, many well-known musicians. We cannot stress this enough: The big companies’ primary orientation is financial. This is a priority that does not mix with the expansion of God’s kingdom. Being contractually bound to an entity with goals that actually oppose yours can bring things to a halt or cause you to compromise. God has called you to have a ministry-- others can push you to have a career. Big companies will spend a lot on publicity for you. You may get bigger faster, but it will cost you dearly-- in ways you can’t imagine.

God, if you’ll let Him, will expand your ministry slowly, with your best interests in mind ...as your faith grows. Your ministry will be well grounded and lifelong. You might not be rich quick, but you will have something much better... “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich and He adds no sorrow with it.” Let your gift make a way for you.

You do not need to seek approval from men. Many in the music industry judge music solely by what they perceive is it’s saleability. It may not help to submit your material to “experts” either: When he was young, Don was told by his music teacher that he had no talent whatsoever and that further lessons would waste his parents money! If you are called by God and annointed by His Spirit, you will have many opportunities.

PRACTICALLY SPEAKING
Concerts are where things begin. They are literally where the rubber (and you) meet the road! It is best to record after doing many successful concerts. You will have your songs down and you will know which ones are good. You will hear people begin to ask for a recording to take home. Nobody wants 1000 CDs sitting in their garage because they won’t sell. Let people know where thay can contact you, or you them, when you recording is ready.

With regard to recording your songs, there are many creative options. There are project studios in abundance that have low and/or negotiable rates. Even better, if you have the aptitude and desire, you should purchase your own recording equipment. Either way, it is possible to put together a great sounding custom project for less than the price of a good used car.

Open your own publishing company, if you are a singer/songwriter. Never sign a song away to a “publishing company” that is associated with a record company-- you will have to pay to use your own songs for the rest of your life. Keep your publishing and your recorded masters in your own barn. They are your future, don’t lose them! A publishing company can be set up through ASCAP or BMI, and it is not expensive or difficult to do. Both of these companies have websites.... check them out. If you are strictly a writer and want to have your works performed by other artists, you’ll have to dig a lot deeper than we can here.

Be your own record label. By keeping the ownership of every aspect of your music ministry, you protect your freedom to follow the Lord. This is vital to the longevity of a ministry. Choose a creative name for your label and print it on your recordings. When things begin to grow, hire people you know who love the Lord to help you with the various organizational aspects of your ministry. We have good friends who help us with correspondence, travel, concerts, our finances and book keeping, web orders and so on...besides that, we pray and dream together.

Don't underestimate the financial side of your ministry. Think big and get ready for God to bless you! When God blesses a music ministry with abundant finances, it becomes possible to give into all sorts of Kingdom endeavors. This is the most exciting part of having any business. A successful music ministry is a double blessing because it is a ministry itself, and it can give into other ministries. Also, as you travel, you will come into contact with other ministries, and outreaches that you would love to support. Your heart and desire for giving will grow. We are a part of an amazing worldwide body. That is why it is important to have your ducks in a row. Money isn't bad, the love of it is. In Jesus we are already wealthy beyond our wildest dreams... money is no big deal whether it is alot or a little, it's all His anyway!

We recommend this model of music ministry because it is very satisfying and fufilling. It allows the ministry togrow according to God’s timing and your faith. It allows your ministry to be an outgrowth of the Lord’s work in your life, which is what it should be. ............................................................Sing to the Lord a new song!
Written by Don Francisco
Visit Don's Site http://www.rockymountainministries.org/

Musician...Educate Thyself!

If you want a record deal, learn what a record deal is, and learn something about the business of music.

Naïve or mis-informed musicians are a menace to themselves. Enough already! Over the decades there have been countless stories of musicians who were ripped off by their record labels and music publishing companies. Why? Exploitation was the name of the game for a long time. Keeping musicians in the dark was standard business practice. However, the past has passed, and today any musicians who sign a record contract (and learns later what he or she signed) have only themselves to blame. Even 20 years ago, it wasn’t that easy to gain access to the inner workings of the music business. (There are more letters in the word business than in the word music.)

Not so today. There are dozens of outstanding books available on every conceivable topic related to the business of music. They can be found in bookstores, libraries, and through the Internet. In addition, there are many schools that now offer 2- 4 year programs on the business of music. Seminars, and workshops are available on a year round basis in most major American cities. Consultants, Attorneys, and Business Organizations are all around and so it is only myth, superstition, stubbornness, and immaturity that stand in the way of any musician making a commitment to educating themselves about the business that exists to exploit their music.

I cannot stress how important I feel this issue is. I am here to tell musicians, one and all, that you have been told many things about music that you did believe. “Spend money on quality instruments and equipment”... you have done that. “Spend time and money on practicing and rehearsing”, you have done that, for the most part (see comments above).

“Spend time and money finding the best recording studio, producer and engineer you can”...you have done that. “Spend time and money learning all you can about the business of music”...well, no one told you to do that did they?!

It has been said about education that we don’t know anything until someone tells us. If that is true, the fault in ‘not telling’ musicians that they MUST spend some time and money on educating themselves on music business issues is the fault of the businessmen and women who kept their clients uninformed. (Ignorance IS bliss as far as the old guard of music executives are concerned). But, KNOWLEDGE IS BLISS should be the byword for the musician of the new millennium. Please...spend some time and money educating yourselves about the music business, a few hours now, can protect your future forever!

Attorney Fee Structures By Bobby Borg

Samuel Butler once said, "In the law, the only thing certain is the expense." People know attorneys aren't cheap, and that's why they avoid calling them in the first place. As a result, they often fly blindly with no contract or they accept terms to agreements they barely understand—and inevitably they run into legal problems.

Attorneys typically charge their clients in one of three ways: by the hour, a flat fee, or a percentage of the deal they negotiate. On your initial meeting with an attorney, you want to be very clear as to which method it's going to be.

Hourly Fees

The hourly fees an attorney charges can range anywhere from $100 for a young attorney to $400 or more for a high-powered attorney. But before you freak out completely, you should know that hourly billing is not as common as some of the other fee structures discussed here. Nonetheless, an attorney who charges by the hour will typically send you a monthly bill. Find out whether you can use a credit card to make payments as well as whether you'll be charged interest for late payments. You may also want to ask if your attorney can set a cap on his or her costs in the event a case drags out for an extended period of time. It's also important to ask exactly how you'll be billed. For instance, you may be billed at increments of an hour. This means that you may be charged for a quarter of an hour for a phone call that only takes three minutes to make. Finally, ask what expenses you'll be charged for, such as faxes, photocopies, postage, messenger services, or even administrative work. Your bill should not only always be easy to understand, it should leave you with no doubts as to what you're paying for.

Flat Fees

Most attorneys are willing to provide a flat estimate of what their services will cost; in actuality, this is their hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours they expect it will take to complete a job. To draft a short agreement, for instance, your fee may be $500 plus out-of-pocket expenses such as faxes and phone calls. Negotiating a recording agreement can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 (and more). Of course if you have a friend who's an attorney, you may be able to talk him into to charging you much less.

Percentage of the Deal

Most attorneys are also willing to work for a percentage of the deals they negotiate. For example, an attorney may agree to work for 5 percent (which, by the way, is the industry standard) for negotiating a recording deal. Out-of-pocket expenses are again separate. When first meeting with an attorney, if your costs are expected to be more than $1,000, regardless of how you're being billed, you have the right to ask for a "fee agreement" in writing. A good attorney will suggest that you price shop to make sure his or her fees are reasonable.

Note that the fee most attorneys charge for what is known as a "label shopping agreement" is five percent of the income derived from the record deal. THIS MAY APPLY FOR THE FULL LENGTH OF THE DEAL. For instance, for every album your band records, your attorney may earn a five percent fee for initially shopping your band long after his job is done. For this reason, a "cap" may be negotiated as to how much the attorney's percentage will yield (e.g., $30,000 over the life of the recording deal).

Retainers

Some attorneys may ask for a retainer upfront against your legal bills. For example, if you pay a retainer of $500, and your attorney charges you $1,000 in legal services, the $500 retainer will be deducted from your bill. At that time, you may be asked to pay the $500 balance and another retainer to be held in trust for further services to be rendered. In the event that your attorney never earns the amount of the initial retainer, and you decide to discontinue your business relationship, the remaining retainer should be paid back; if you pay a retainer of $500 and your attorney's charges for the month are only $300, the extra $200 should typically be returned.

PRESS RELATIONS: WHO IS SPEAKING FOR YOU?

PRESS RELATIONS: WHO IS SPEAKING FOR YOU?
by Jennifer Layton, Indie-Music.com
© 2005 All Rights Reserved.

We hate to do it. And in the six years that I've worked for Indie-Music.com, I've only seen our company do it three times. But if pushed, we will.

We have banned some managers, reps, and PR agents from submitting artists to our web site.

It's always a last resort. And no, I'm not going to say who they are. My purpose in even bringing it up is to ask you, the independent artist, if you know just how you are being represented. You may not realize it, but the person you've hired to open some doors for you may instead be getting them slammed, locked, and boarded up with enough plywood to hold back a category five.

Sounds dramatic, but bear in mind that it takes some pretty annoying behavior to make us tell a manager not to contact us anymore.

Sometimes the problem is simply laziness. A rep sends us a CD without filling out our submission form or providing any contact information. We manage to find the rep's email address and ask her to go back and follow our guidelines. She doesn't, but she keeps sending us CDs from all the other bands she's promoting. We keep asking her to follow the guidelines, she keeps ignoring us. Eventually, we put her email address on our "block" list, and every package with her company logo on it goes right into the trash can next to our box at the post office.

The message being sent by this rep is very clear: I don't care about these artists or think there's anything special about them. They're just a list of names. I'll just send their CDs out everywhere so I can tell them I'm actually doing something.

Occasionally, we get the bullies. We recently had a PR rep leave belligerent messages on our company voice mail, demanding to know why his artists had not yet been reviewed. I called him a couple of times, explaining that we don't guarantee reviews and that we ask for at least a couple of months' lead time. He left more messages over the next several weeks, demanding results for his bands and accusing us of putting his artists on hold because they don't advertise with us. (For the record, advertising is never a factor in who gets reviewed at Indie-Music.com.)

We eventually banned him from the site, which was necessary but a shame. I visited the web sites of the bands he represented, and they seem to be hardworking, talented artists. I'm pretty sure they have no idea how they are being marketed.

Some artists have found out, often after serious damage has been done to their reputations. I recently interviewed Cincinnati artist Jeff Goins, a studio producer, writer, and member of the Vic Daniels Quartet. Thanks to what he credits as good management early in the band's career, they had established solid and friendly contacts with venue owners in Cincinnati and had built a reputation as a talented and reliable band.

Then their manager got a divorce and moved to California. So Goins and his bandmates began looking for new management. After some searching, they thought they'd found a winner. (Goins cares enough about professionalism to ask that I not print the manager's name.)

"At first glance," he explains, "we thought he was an upstanding professional who knew his way around Cincinnati and could help us out. But things started going wrong pretty quickly. At our biggest gig ever, he didn't show up until the third day of the festival. He brought his assistant along to do most of the work and told us privately that he had thrown her into the mix to see if she would sink or swim. Basically, he was testing a new assistant and using our careers to do it. And we hardly saw her at all."

Over the next six months, the new manager only found the band one paying gig. He told the band they just weren't marketable. Despite such alleged unpopularity, Goins was able to book several paying gigs for the band on his own. But he didn't realize how truly damaging the new rep was until the band's invitation to perform at the 2005 Midpoint Music Festival was abruptly withdrawn. Bypassing his manager, Goins made his own phone calls to find out why. He learned that word of his manager's unprofessional tactics had spread like wildfire.

"Our management actually went through the offices of venues we were playing and took office supplies like they owned the place," Goins says. "They kept badgering anyone who would listen, just being annoying, and even trying to turn people against each other. Our biggest client in Indianapolis told us that they would not have us back next year if they were still our managers."

Needless to say, they weren't the managers for much longer. And Goins is trying to find representation that comes as close as possible to the manager who had helped them so much in the beginning.

"I miss him," Goins says. "He got us great gigs, paid us at the gigs, took photos, and made us look great."

And there's the key to a good manager: Someone who wants to make the artist look great. Period. That very quality is what's missing from the lazy manager, the bully, and the swaggering backstage loudmouth. They've forgotten that the motivation to get into music management is supposed to be the love of music. They're supposed to be content to be in the background, doing everything they can to give the artist the spotlight and make them look good in it. When they succeed, they should want to give public credit to the artist while taking personal satisfaction in a job well done.

Goins still laments over the damage done during his band's six months of bad management. But in many cases, it can be undone. Especially with the press. I have been contacted directly by bands who have apologized for their manager's tactics and asked if they can submit CDs and deal with me directly. My answer is always yes.

And while good managers may be hard to find, they are out there. Indie-Music.com may have banned three of them, but we have dealt with literally hundreds of reps, from all over the world, who are professional, courteous, and genuinely excited about the bands they represent. They follow submission guidelines, respond promptly to emails, and send thank-you notes when good reviews are published.

When you do take a chance and hire one of them, don't wait six months to find out if they're really working for you. Listen to how they sound on the phone. Find out where they're sending press kits, and contact a couple of the editors and venue owners on your own to find out what kind of impression they are making. (If it's a bad one, don't worry, you'll get an earful.)

Look at your schedule. Are they getting you gigs? Are you getting paid? If not, are they telling you that your music just isn't marketable? If they truly feel that way about your music, why in the world are you paying them?

A little bit of detective work in the beginning can save your band a damaged career in the long run. If you've found management that gets you results, you can relax and focus on basking in the spotlight they're working hard to make you look good in.

Jennifer Layton fell into indie music writing completely by accident. (When first asked to review CDs for Indie-Music.com in 1999, she had no idea what indie music was.) Since then, she has written hundreds of articles and CD reviews for Indie-Music.com, as well as bios for individual artists. She has also contributed articles to IndyMonkey, Shock Value Webzine, The American Reporter Online, The Cary News, Raleigh's Spectator Magazine, GoGirlsMusic.com, and Independent Musician Magazine. She has represented Indie-Music.com as a judge at the Six String Shoot-Out and at the North Carolina Songwriters Competition. Despite repeated listenings, intricate sentence diagramming, and expensive psychotherapy, she still cannot for the life of her understand the plot to the 1973 Vicki Lawrence song "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia." Visit her on the web at www.jenniferlayton.com

Goodbye 2005

It's over...

Did you achieve all of the music business goals that you set for yourself?

If not, you may find it helpful to write everything down next year. That will improve your success dramatically.

Setting Goals:

I can read your mind. You’re thinking, “Oh no! Not another talk about the virtues of goal setting. I’m sick of hearing about it!” My question to you is, do you have written goals?

Most people don’t have a plan of written goals and most people aren’t successful, happy, or doing what they want in life. Decide right now that you are going to be different. Decide that you are going to be successful. Goal setting is a necessary component for your success.

Well defined goals keep you on track and motivated when the times get tough. And, there will be tough, tough times. Goals will help keep you fired up and working towards your dream.

"Success" is often defined as the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal. If you are doing the things that are moving you toward the attainment of your goal today, then you are "successful" even if you are not there yet. It's the goal that starts the whole journey.

An illuminating study on goal setting sponsored by the Ford Foundation found that,

• 23% of the population has no idea what they want from life and as a result they don't have much.
• 67% of the population has a general idea of what they want but they don't have any plans for how to get it.
• Only 10% of the population has specific, well-defined goals, but even then, 7 out of the 10 of those people reach their goals only half the time.
• The top 3%, however, achieved their goals 89% of the time.

What accounts for the dramatic difference between that top 3% and the others? Are you ready?: the top 3% wrote down their goals. It can be that simple! Dreams and wishes are not goals until they are written as specific end results on paper. In some very real sense, writing them down materializes them. Goals have been described as "dreams with a deadline". Written, specific goals provide direction and focus to our activities. They become a road map to follow. And the mind tends to follow what's in front of it.

After you have set your goals FIRST CHOICE MANAGEMENT can develop an action plan* for achieving them. Some people have great goals. They get all fired up but never take action to achieve them. Your action plan simply “chunks down” the necessary steps you are going to have to take to reach your goal.

If your ready to move up to the top 3% contact me at martin@firstchoiceonline.com