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Practice Tips from the Pros and Your Most Important Asset for $ales
We’re Rachel Hurley and Frank Keith IV, co-owners of the music publicity firm Sweetheart PR. Once a week, we’ll publish a new edition of My Manager, where we’ll share actionable advice on all facets of the music industry - “news you can use.” The newsletter is free to all until August, at which point we’ll pivot to a $5/month subscription for the weekly newsletter, and we’ll send out a monthly “Free Friday” roundup with limited access.
This week, we talk with acclaimed singer/songwriter and fiddle player Phoebe Hunt. Phoebe is our client, but she has spent her quarantine doing something super cool that we thought you might want to know about. How would you like some practice tips from some of the most respected musicians in the business? Yeah, we thought so... read on.
INTERVIEW: PHOEBE HUNT // MUSICIAN // PLANT SEEDS OF MUSIC
A conversation with Phoebe Hunt about her new project, Plant Seeds of Music, which is a free online educational resource intended to create an opportunity for musical growth and connection through practice. The purpose is to foster connection within the global community of musicians, from music dabblers to advanced pickers, to music fans alike. Among the artists whose videos have been released in the first wave are: Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, Sierra Hull, Tony Trischka, Allison Russell, Paul Kowert, and Brittany Haas.
Other artists that have committed involvement include: Molly Tuttle, Carrie Elkin, Mary Bragg, Dori Freeman, Katie Shore, Kala Ramnath, Marcia Ball, Rushad Eggleston, David Grisman, Terri Hendrix, Rachel Price, Peter Rowan, and April Verch. For more check out the video excerpt from our full chat, or listen to the full podcast.
Full Interview with Phoebe Hunt (40-min podcast)
Why Email Marketing Is Still King When It Comes To Sales (Blog Post)
Don’t have time to read all the trade news? Here are some weekly highlights:
Billboard Announces New Chart Rules: No More Merch & Ticket Bundles
How Businesses Have Successfully Pivoted During the Pandemic
Podcasts Worth Your Time
H/T to Todd L. Burns for this one:
Listen closely to the start of the 2015 hit "Hey Mama" by David Guetta, Nicki Minaj, Afrojack, and Bebe Rexha and you'll hear voices intoning a chant: "Be my woman, girl, I'll be your man." It's sample from a 1948 recording called "Rosie," and it's the propulsive hook of "Hey Mama," driving the song to over a billion views on YouTube. The voices in the sample belong to CB Cook and ten other unidentified prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka Parchman Farm. These men never got credit for their work, even though it's been reused by everyone from Guetta to the Animals to Nina Simone. We investigate the story of "Rosie" to understand an inequity that lies at the heart of the music business and our national consciousness.
Rosie: Investigating a Crime at the Heart of the Music Industry
Sloane Spencer of the cult podcast Country Fried Rock interviews Americana music photographer Chad Cochran a.k.a. CowtownChad (Jason Isbell, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Jim Lauderdale, Elizabeth Cook) about his mental health-focused photo/essay series I Didn’t Want to Tell You which was published in No Depression.
Country Fried Rock - IDWTTY #2007
These are the best podcasts we have ever heard about revenue from streaming:
Setlist: The ten things people get wrong about streaming – Part One
Setlist: The ten things people get wrong about streaming – Part Two
Your DIY Toolkit (we’ll give you one tool a week to focus on)
Keeping the focus on Plant Seeds of Music, we wanted to share with you how Phoebe has been able to get 1100 sign-ups and 50 paying customers in the last two weeks. She is using a sales tool called ClickFunnels. It helps her obtain the most valuable thing you can get from a potential customer - an email address. If you are not collecting email addresses from your fans, girl, what is you doing?
Email is still king when it comes to marketing and selling. We won’t go through the entire process here - just check their website (and our blog post) - but it basically allows you to create a landing page, obtain your potential customers’ email address, take them to a sales page, then to an upsell page. It’s up to you, obviously, to come up with something of value to market to your fans. It could be a free DL of a new single, an online concert, handwritten lyrics, a custom song, the options are as vast as your creativity. There are also OTHER funnel marketing options if you want to compare prices.
To learn more, check out this explanation of How the Marketing Funnel Works From Top to Bottom.
Social Media News
Instagram Will Roll Out Reels—Its TikTok Competitor—In America In Early August
17 Creative Social Media Marketing Ideas to Energize Your Online Presence
TikTok of the Week
Just for Fun
Top 25 Most Searched For Lyrics Of 2020 (So Far)
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Coming next week:
A talk with Lauren Kasper, Nashville Label Manager for The Orchard.
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