LIVAMP Funding: How Does It Work?

The Basics

The LIVAMP Funding platform (www.livamp.com/funding) makes it easy to offer a percentage of artists' rights in exchange for funding for specific projects. Artists/managers/labels post their proposals and provide supporting information, while individual investors and investment funds review the opportunities and make offers. 

Rights may include a stake in future revenue from live performances, recorded music, merchandising, publishing, or brand sponsorships and advertising. Artists can offer one specific type of right, all of them, or some combination in between - different careers require different structures.

Investment through LIVAMP is always allocated to specific projects. Examples of common projects are tour support, marketing/promotion campaigns, and production.

Deals range from tens of thousands to millions, but on average, we find a developing artist with strong credentials and track record is able to raise ~$30-50,000 in exchange for ~20% of some combination of rights.  

"Will This Work For Me?"

Believe it or not, investing is also an art and not a science. Some investors are drawn to numbers, while others focus on the team involved. Here’s a simple breakdown of just some of the most common elements investors ask about:

1. History of past success: Have you generated revenue already through your work or performances? Was your single charting on Hype Machine or featured in a bunch of top Spotify playlists throughout 2016? Have you been on tour beyond small local venues in your home town? Have you had press coverage or had your music licensed for a TV show? 
    
2. Upcoming milestones: Have you been speaking to a booking agent that wants to book you for tour opening slots? Is CAA on board as long as you have tour support? Is a label interested in releasing your next album? Do you have a brand endorsement deal lined up which will pay out over time?
    
3. The team: who is your management? Is an indie label on board? Do you have a specific agency for marketing/PR in mind? Who will book your tour?
    

4. Talent: Last, but certainly not least - does your music engage audiences?
    

"How do I get started?"

Registering a new deal is a piece of cake, but beyond that, we want to give you as many tools as possible to best paint the story of your investment. Below is a rundown of how to get started along with a basic overview of some of our platform's features that let you differentiate your story from the crowd.

Log onto livamp.com with Facebook, Google, or a custom User ID and password. If you’re an artist, register yourself as an artist. If you’re a manager, chose ‘manager or label’ from the drop down list at sign in. Once you’re logged in, head over to your funding dashboard. Here you’ll be able to create your deal.

You should have an idea of the following before you launch a deal:

1. How much money you’re looking to raise
2. What you’re spending it on
3. A rough estimate of next year's revenue
4. What rights you’re willing to offer
5. Which works you’d be willing to give up recording and publishing rights on (if you’re offering those)
6. An estimate of what percentage you’d like to offer up
7. And whether or not you'd be willing to offer investors the ability to first recoup their investment (a structure that incentivizes investors, but may not work for all artists)

Once you launch your deal, you can always go back in and edit the terms or the amount you’re looking for. From there, let’s move onto some important tools which help us better understand your opportunity. These "diligence" tools include your business plan, diligence questionnaire and your story builder. Artists that take their time to go through these in a thoughtful manner instantly stand out.

1. Business Plan

The most important tool in this arsenal is your business plan - you can always find it in the Diligence Tools section of the funding dashboard.

The business plan lets you paint a vision of where you see your revenue going over the next five years under reasonable assumptions:

Once you enter values for the preliminary questions, the tool enables you to adjust the basic assumptions for the next five years. Pro tip: make sure to play with these values. Our model leaves the amounts the same for years 1-5, so it’s your job to paint a more accurate (and convincing) storyline.

You should be filling out these values assuming that you will continue to grow and work hard while also erring on the conservative side. Be reasonable and put yourself in the shoes of the investor: going from $1,000 to $100,000 in one year may happen, but forecasting that without substantiation will make you appear not very serious.

We’ll be asking you where you see your income going across these revenue sources:

• Club shows (think: shows where you’ll get a percentage of ticket sales)
• Larger shows (think: shows where you may get a minimum guarantee or a flat fee: e.g. a festival or tour opening slot)
• Recorded music (album sales and streaming...remember, it's 2017...)
• Licensing (synch)
• Sponsorships
• Merchandise

Once you go through the main revenue streams, you’ll be taken to a summary of your five years and what your return to investors will be at the basic deal terms. Investors typically look to make at least 2-3x their investment over 5 years under defensible assumptions. If you believe in your business plan, but are below that benchmark, consider asking for less capital or offering a higher percentage on your rights.
 

2. Annotating Your Business Plan

Once your business plan is set, a nice way to add more color to the numbers is by annotating it. We've integrated the tools from our friends at Genius to let you walk investors through your thinking.

Do you have something almost certainly in the works that’s hiking year 1 number up? Don’t leave it to us to infer what that something might be - annotate it and lay down the cold hard facts. Investors love a juicy storyline with evidence to substantiate it.

To use the annotation tool, make sure you have marked the business plan Public (switch at the top right corner) and follow the "Annotate Plan" link.  This will show you how investors see your plan.

Highlight the number you'd like to annotate and then press the 'annotate' pop up. 

A panel will appear on the righthand side of the page where you can type up the note and Save it. That's it! 

Annotated numbers will now clearly show up highlighted upon review:

3. Diligence Questionnaire

The diligence questionnaire is a central place to provide and verify the basics about your commercial career. 

Be detailed with your answers but to the point. Here’s a breakdown of the information we’ll be asking you here:

• Historical revenue (since you’ve been a musician as well as in the last 12 months)
• Are there clear catalysts for generating revenue over the next 12-18 months. If the answer is yes, we’ll ask you for more details on what the opportunity is.
• The team - it takes a village to raise a child and it takes even more than that to launch a successful music career. We want to know who’s in your corner.
• Upcoming milestones - new album cycle? New marketing campaign? What’s going to drive your work?
• Press - any notable press coverage invesors should familiarize themselves with?
• Streaming - what are your streaming numbers looking like and on which platform?

This questionnaire further enables us and potential investors to differentiate between opportunities. It's most certainly ok if you're just getting started and haven't generated any revenue yet - but this will likely drive the terms you can get from potential investors relative to someone who has been touring for 5 years.

If you feel like there’s something we’re missing which further substantiates your proposal, you can always reach out via email (info@livamp.com) to get your message across in addition to filling out the form. 

Pro tip: Be as thoughtful as possible with your business plan and diligence questionnaire. This is what we pay most attention to when analyzing opportunities on the platform.

4. Story Builder

If you have a rather well rounded idea of what your investment pitch is, this is the place for it to be heard. The story builder tells us what your elevator pitch is, what musicians you compare yourself to, and your recent growth.

This is where your personality can really shine through. Tell us about who you are, and what makes you not only special, but a notable investment opportunity.

Do’s and Don’t to help you get funding - A Summary:

• Do have a plan/budget in place for what you need funding. Get down to the details.
• Don’t email us daily saying “When do I get paid?”. This isn't a charity or a blind pool of free money. Getting funding is a process and can take some time to execute fully.
• Do work with us: answer our emails, don’t disappear for weeks at a time, provide verification for your claims.
• Do let us know If there’s a pivotal change in the story line. If you didn’t have a team on board before, but have just begun working with a world class agent or manager - let's update your proposal and make sure we know to get the message out.
• Do fill out the diligence form and the business plan once you register a deal.
• Don’t not register a deal, and then ask us if we can find an investor. Investors are looking to make well-educated and researched decisions. Let's give them enough ammo.
• Do annotate anything on the business plan that might not make sense to a brand new reader
• Do have valid reasons to back up your business plan estimates.

Of course, at the end of the day this is just an overview and surely more simple than the intricacies of getting a deal fully funded, but we hope that this post has been able to shed some light on our process and methods of thinking. If you have any other questions or comments, feel free to drop us a line at info@livamp.com.

Get started at www.livamp.com/funding

Music press is biased. Financials are not. Digging into Warner Music’s recent performance.

In the “real” world, when analysts or investors look to examine the state of an industry, they often start with an assessment of the performance of the major players — using them as the bellwether. In the music industry, people seemingly receive their facts from tabloid news about Ms. Swift and Radiohead.

Warner Music Group — one of the three largest music copyright owners, music promoters, and music investors rolled into one — files quarterly statements with detailed financial insight on their various divisions. They offer the most disclosure of the 3 major labels and thus there’s no excuse to ignore the facts.

We track this closely at LIVAMP Funding since industry growth is so important to understand for anyone investing in artists through our platform.  Warner's last quarter, announced a few days ago, was a continuation of the trend they've seen and it’s pretty stunning. Here are 5 numbers that caught our attention:

Source: Warner Music Group 10Q Filing for Quarter Ending Jun 30 2016

Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on at a few of these.

15% Growth of Recorded Music
 

Yes, this is all of recorded music including downloads and physical. You know, the same subject matter that journalists love to make Trump-esque headlines about:

(The Atlantic)

Within Recorded Music sit a few different revenue streams, but the biggest by far are Digital formats and Physical formats. Here’s a closer look at the composition of this segment and their relative growth rates:

When streaming (+45%) and downloads (-12%) are shaken and stirred together, they result in a 19% growth rate for digital revenues. Think about that — that’s revenues flowing to copyright holders: not streams, views, clicks or social media followers. That’s an average Warner Music Group album that didn’t exist 365 days ago and then got put on digital platforms for paid consumption. Let's give you some more context — Twitter grew revenues 20% in the same time period. Is Twitter dead?

15% Growth of A&R Spend

A&R is a sexy term thrown around at music conferences, but as a financial expense line it comprises three things:
 

 1) Royalties to artists/songwriters/producers/etc
 2) Cost of artist development
 3) Cost of music production in the studio

The first one is a straightforward variable cost. Label owns X% of an artist’s rights so for every $1 of income, they pay get $1*(1-X) to the artist.

#2 and #3 are true investment dollars in artists. So let's put a slightly sensationalist spin on it: the big boys of the industry are growing their risk-taking by 15% this year. Think they may have a closer ear to the ground than whatever blog wrote about Taylor Swift keeping her music off Spotify?
 

26% Growth of Artist Services/Expanded Rights

This division encompasses Warner’s participation in non-traditional rights such as concert promotion, sponsorships, as well as services offered to artists on a commercial basis (vs. on an investment basis). This is an exciting story — more and more artists are looking to maintain more of their traditional music rights/creative control but still need to put together a holistic team to help them properly promote and monetize their overall brand. This business is clearly benefitting from this trend.

11% Growth of Physical

Alright, this one is hard to extrapolate too much — they had an insanely successful release of a popular French artist’s album (Renaud). But even looking back to a quarter before, physical sales were pretty much flat when you take out currency swings. Europe is a big driver here — in many countries, CD and vinyl sales still represent ~60% of all music income. Remember, Spotify and Deezer are both streaming giants that have come from Europe so it’s hard to make the standard European tech argument that “they’re just a few years behind the US in their conversion”. We’d expect this to be a much more gradual transition into digital than many expect.

-12% Decline in Downloads

This is obviously the sore point. Downloads are still ~18% of recorded music (and ~22% at Universal) which is not an insignificant number. But let’s draw a conclusion that may be even more relevant to younger artists just starting out and making the decision of how to distribute and promote their music. In a world of short attention spans, would you rather show a 12% decline in the income of your product or 45% growth?

What we don’t know

• How was growth distributed between newer artists and established catalog. e.g. we know that Lukas Graham’s debut US release was a big driver this quarter, but how much of the streaming growth was also impacted by Ed Sheeran’s continued success?
• Was A&R investment concentrated on existing artists or new acts?
• How big of an impact of Warner’s strong performance relative to competitors was related to the timing of new releases?

Did we miss anything? Reach out at info@livamp.com and subscribe below for more

Streaming: mean, scary, and...profitable?

Angry celebrities, restless investors, draconian media. Man, streaming services just can't catch a break! 

We wanted to get a sense for just how valuable streaming can be for young artists and for their potential investors (e.g. on our artist funding platform). Here's what we did:

• We picked a bunch of artists who are starting to catch a real break. Solid artists who have been around for 3-5 years, but by no means household names. Ever heard of Unknown Mortal Ochestra? Maybe if you're in with the really cool kids, but definitely not if you're a 40 year old guy with a healthy checkbook (and we need more of those in the industry!) 
   
• We went back 5 years (or less, for some of the younger acts) using Spotify as the only platform, counted up all the streams, and estimated the earnings using some commonly-used benchmarks converting streams to $
   
• We simulated the average investment deal we see on our platform for artists at a similar stage of development and calculated what the returns to those early investors could be from Spotify streaming alone. Here's what we found:

Is this analysis flawed? Yes, but in both direction. Perhaps it is absurdly self-serving if our artist sample set is not very representative. On the other hand, this is ridiculously conservative as it excludes any income from the various other income streams artists have (live music, video streaming, TV/film placements, merchandising, downloads, etc).

Bottom line: whether you're an artist or a potential investor in artists, don't write off a healthy source of income.

P.S. If anyone is curious about the inputs we used, just reach out!

How to find investors and turn your music into a career

Your music career is a business and businesses need sustainable funding to grow. Choosing how you approach your fundraising can be just as important as picking what producer you work with or what publicist you hire. Those who know us are aware that we are very strong advocates for structuring your fundraising campaign as an offer to invest in you rather than a plea for a donation. But if the concept of “investment” may seem big, scary, and complicated, read on as we demystify it and provide a brief primer on raising funds.  And since everyone loves lists, we’ll do it all in lists!

4 Basics to Remember

1. You own several assets that someone could theoretically invest in: your recorded music, your publishing rights, and the rights to your live performance income. Each has its own nuances for how a 3rd party could invest in it, but none of them is rocket science to understand (and if you work with us, we’ll take care of all the paperwork).
   
   
2. Your music income today, or maybe lack thereof, is not at all reflective of your commercial potential over the next 5 years
   
   
3. An investment is not a loan – if things don’t work out, nobody is going to take your house. But it’s also not a donation – if you make money from the product that someone else helped you bring to life, they should make money too
   
   
4. Investors - whether in stocks or gold - love interesting, unusual investments that aren’t widely available to the rest of the world
    

Top 5 reasons to look for investors vs. donors

1. You’re properly aligning incentives and therefore creating true long-term backers rather than one-time supporters. If you win, they win - thus it’s natural for investors to want to support you beyond your first project.
   
   
2. Potential for larger checks: put yourself in the shoes of your potential backers – would you offer more money to own 1 CD (that’s going to become available on Spotify anyway) or to own a stake in all income that CD may generate?   
   
   
3. Appearances - Professional vs. amateur. Serious industry people like dealing with serious musicians or their managers. A record label or publishing deal you may otherwise covet is nothing more than a large investment with a pre-baked team that will spend that money for you. By talking in terms of investments, you demonstrate that you see commercial potential in your work and have a strategy. Speaking of which:
   
   
4. Forces you to define your “story” and a defensible plan of action. Best and quickest outcomes come out of having a solid brand, plan and strategy in place. This is an exercise every artist should be going through anyway, but presenting a cohesive story to investors is a great reason to get going.
   
   
5. Makes you think about what your music is worth and why. Do you give up 20% for $10,000? 10%? 30%? Why? There’s no science to this question but it’s worth having an opinion even at an early stage. If you’re not sure how to approach this, let us know and we’d love to help think it through together.
    

Who can become your investors: 4 high probability suggestions

1. Those who…invest! It may be your uncle who is a retirement adviser, your university professor who also happens to own 3 apartment buildings, or your buddy who lucked out investing in Uber early on.
   
   
2. Brands. You may already be working with the likes of Jack Daniels or Urban Outfitters on one-off sponsorships of events. Offer them to invest that same money in your next project. $1,000 to one of those companies is a drop in the bucket, but the PR message of “We are long term-investors in indie music” can be priceless for them.
   
   
3. Local businesses. The owner of the swanky cocktail lounge down the block would likely think even more highly of himself if he could tell his friends he’s backing a rock band. At the same time, your parents’ accountant could definitely earn some “street cred” by investing in a great act.
    
4. Art collectors, fine wine connoisseurs, and anyone with a yacht. 

5 Best Practices for Finding Investors

• Build a story. We’ve written on thinking about your career as a brand before, but it’s worth reiterating. It’s a competitive space and people have short attention spans. Condense your story to a one sentence pitch: e.g.  “____ meets ____” is an easy one to get started with. Here are a few other examples of great artists who have been able to package themselves well, but definitely let us know if we can be helpful in crafting your story – it’s the best part of our job!

www.livamp.com/featureddeal/karim

www.livamp.com/featureddeal/fingertrap

• Be proud of your objective to find investors. Present it as an opportunity you’re offering to your network and not as a favor you’re asking of them. Remember, if you take yourself seriously – others will too!
  

• Make it feel exclusive and available for a limited window of time. Not to be confused with the paranoia-inspiring nature of expiring donation-based campaigns, but it is important to emphasize that the funds you are seeking to raise are part of a bigger train that needs to keep on moving. And since you’re the one offering an investment, you’re in a position to make potential funders feel like the train will leave the station with or without them.
  
  
• Spin a little, bullshit never. The future is uncertain – people get that. There is nothing wrong with presenting your big vision for yourself (what’s the point of having unambitious goals?!). But there’s a fine line between painting a rosy future and misleading potential investors. If you are building your story on the back of artificially inflated social media numbers you bought for $25, the truth will catch up with you and damage your career in the longer term.
  
  
• Don’t assume your fundraising promotes itself. Not unlike your amazing video content, your live shows, or your latest EP – you can’t rely on ‘the internet’ to float great things to the top. Get out there and talk to people, send newsletters, post on social media, and incorporate the message into your live shows. Feel like you don’t have the right tools? 
   

3 ways LIVAMP can help you get started right away:

1. Building your investment story
2. Building your newsletter messaging around your fundraise efforts
3. Building your social media assets around your fundraise effort
    

4 ways we can take it even further

1. Feature you in our newsletter to a handpicked group of investors

2. Suggest your deal alongside those that are picking up steam (to be included in a “portfolio”, a tool we offer to investors

3. Help you find great partners (e.g. producers) for your project to make your story even more compelling

4. On occasion, co-invest

Makes sense? Ok, now go out and make it happen! And if we can help, we are just an click away. Visit livamp.com/funding to get going.

"Sorry, but you need to be a product" or 5 (painful) ways to force yourself to think commercially

Your art is beautiful. But is your art also a product? You may not want it to be and that's perfectly normal. But for those who are pushing forward with a commercial music career in mind, here is our humble view on the 5 things to never forget:

1)     The era of “they sold out to the man” is over. Accept it. If you can find a brand to back you for a single gig, a tour, or an entire campaign – take it. Not only will you likely get a bit of cash thrown at you, but the exposure is totally worth it, not to mention it means that both you and others see value in your work. And better yet, actively search for these opportunities. In this overly saturated environment, great things don't often come to those who wait so be proactive and if you need any help along the way, you know where to find us. 
 

2)      Craft an image that stretches from your outfit to your Instagram to how venues and blogs describe you on their listings. Sadly, just being a great “acoustic singer/songwriter with soaring vocals” is no longer enough of a descriptor. Are you the “girl next door with a dark side” or the “urban soulstress with gut wrenching lyrics”? Pick one and stick to it in everything you put out physically or digitally. Our friend Trevor Gibson, Grammy-winning engineer at Circle Studios in Birmingham, has written extensively about this in the past: http://www.supajam.com/blog/article/So-you-want-a-recording-contract-3
 

3)     Understand the commercial trajectory of your music career…or pick one! Yes everyone wants to be Adele and sell 3 million albums in a week and that’s a fine goal to have – we’d never discourage anyone from dreaming big. But how do you get there? With streaming not likely a huge contributor to indie musicians’ income until the Spotify’s of the world grow their paid user bases dramatically, you need to have a view of how you’re going to make money in the interim. Is it sync for HBO shows? Then study what works and find producers who can get you there (we can help with that too [#shamelessplug]). Is it touring? Then gig non-stop until you can secure a high profile agent who can get you placed on the right line-ups. 
 

4)      Always be 2 steps ahead of the game. We also call this “product, marketing, product”. If you’re in the midst of recording your first album or EP, you MUST have at least a view of 1) what your marketing strategy will be once it’s released + 2) what this marketing strategy should lead to in terms of next product. Seems like planning to far ahead? Yes, but that’s how businesses work and just going with the flow won't cut it.  

For #1, this should be a specific plan of attack: i.e. “reach these 10 individuals who cover genres closest to mine in these 10 blogs that tend to boost Hype Machine rankings” instead of “I plan to book gigs and reach out to blogs” (we can definitely help with this). For #2, if your marketing strategy is successful, your newly found audience will very soon get hungry for new content – have a plan for a few more tracks or at least some unique video ready to go to keep the momentum going. 
 

5)      Build a network of randoms! Not quite, but this may seem like it. Your gut may tell you that you need to get closer to label executives, writers for NME and the guys at BBC. That’d be great! But chances are you’ll build a better relationship with the above through warm introductions from someone you completely didn’t expect. So talk to anyone because oftentimes your connections will surprise you. The little peeps are stepping stones to the heavy hitters, so don't be afraid to chat up videographers, engineers, promoters, publicists, lawyers and tell them your goals and vision for yourself. Chances are your determination will inspire someone enough to think of an even more helpful introduction.

Refine your stage presence...please! Our 10 suggestions:

Stage presence is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit these days. As live performances become a bigger piece of the economics in the music industry, knowing that an artist is going to be a well-rounded entertainer gives confidence to managers, promoters, venues, and other influencers who can open doors.

We pay close attention to this as we watch hundreds of shows every week. A few do’s and dont's start to emerge:

1)   Have a purpose. Treat every show as an opportunity to promote yourself and your work broadly, but also have a specific objective in mind. Are you there to grow your Twitter followers by impressing fans of the band that’s playing before/after you? Are you there to sell your latest album? Are you there to wow a specific industry person in the room? Yes, it’s always “all of the above” but if you communicate too many messages, people will start to get lost.

2)  Self-deprecation is cute and funny...when you do it once. It’s amazing how often artists make fun of themselves repeatedly in front of a live audience. It’s charming if you say “My piano skills are a bit rusty, but I’ll give it a go” and then blow the room away and continue strong with the momentum. It’s a different story when you repeatedly remind us how broke you are, how you may forget the lyrics, how your album may not be that good. In a world of unlimited options for music, it’s just not funny!

3) If you’re selling merch or albums, act like you’re proud of your product. If you've spent your time and money on creating a product, you should be proud of it - so act like it! Some say a product is only worth how much people are willing to spend on it, so plant the seed of positivity, pick an affordable price, commit to it and spread the word. Your merch is an extension of your brand - not a church gift basket.

4)  Who are you again? How do we find you? People shuffle in and out of the room. We wouldn’t suggest repeating your name after every song, but have the discipline to clearly announce who you are at the start and at the end. Simultaneously give people your simplest online URL – when you tell people 6 URL’s, they won’t remember any. If you couldn’t avoid using an “_1” in your Instagram, skip it and just tell people your Facebook or website. They should be able to find all your links there anyway. If you need help setting up and maintaining your social media, check out management.livamp.com

5)   Arrogance may work for rap superstars but why would it work for you? We recently saw a show at a half-full, 100 capacity bar where the artist stopped mid-song to yell at a few members of the audience for being too noisy. Yes, it’s annoying and disrespectful as hell but you just aren’t there yet. Similarly, if your general attitude reads “I’m too good to be here”, please remind yourself that what works for Kanye isn’t the right template for an up-and-coming indie band.

6)   Save the inside jokes for the after-gig cocktails. It’s awesome that your friends made it out to the show! Definitely give a shout out and thank them. But don’t start a prolonged sidebar conversation making fun of your best friend’s funny sweater – this is not your happy hour, you’re there to pick up new fans.

7)   We’re here for the music, not a sh*tty comedy show. Charm is everything and humor plays a big part in it. Non-stop dad jokes after every song are a) a lottery + b) a distraction. Polish your performance by striking the right balance between lightening the mood after a dark ballad with something short and sweet without trying to make us laugh every time you open your mouth.

8)  Engage with fans after the show. There's no better way to gain a fan than serenading them and following it up with some real conversation. Stick around for a drink or two at the venue and mingle - you never know who you'll meet. 

9)  Cross the t’s and dot the I’s. This one is obvious but always worth repeating. At the end of every show, thank the sound engineer, the venue and/or the promoter who booked you. You may have thought there was not enough bass in your monitor and you’re very frequently going to think you’re being underpaid, but again, suck it up and go off with style and grace. Remember, you’re playing for the audience – they need to see you as a decent human being. Unless, once again, you’re going for that Kanye thing.

10)   Do what works for you. Know who you are as a brand, and work with it. You can't be everything to everyone - but what you can do is understand yourself as both a musician and an enterprise and use that to your advantage. Comparing Ed Sheeran's stage presence to that of Beyonce's is like comparing apples to oranges, but when it comes down to it, they're both grade A fruit. 

Let us know if you disagree or if we're missing some tips that may be helpful to other musicians! And if you'd like to chat about how we can help with all the boring computer work (social media, bookings, blogs, etc) that's distracting you from rehearsing send us a note at info@livamp.com!

10 Brutally Honest Tips for Artists to Not Suck at Social Media

Through our streaming of tens of thousands musicians, we end up spending countless hours on bands' social media pages. There's no denying that a strong social media presence is absurdly important in today's world, but it can also feel like a full time job. So here are 10 ways not to suck at it, in our humble but honest opinion:

---

1) JUST ANNOUNCED: Your automatic, text-only Bandsintown/ReverbNation/etc posts about your next 10 gigs look like you don't give a sh*t about any one of them. Nobody likes a robot. You must define your personal branding and stick to it in every thing you put out online (see #5 below)

2) You're not tabloid-worthy just yet. Mixing in your personal mundane life activities with your music account makes it look like your mom is your only fan. We care that a blog wrote an interview  about you and want to read it. We couldn't care less that you were 45 minutes late to your dentist appointment.

3) If you haven't posted in a week, people who stumble onto your page will assume you decided a music career was too challenging for  you. 

4) Try this exercise: find your favorite 5 famous musicians and imitate their Twitter behavior for a week (other than #2 above)

5) Keep a consistent brand, style and voice in everything you do: gig flyers, release announcements, EP covers, etc. Try www.canva.com for a simple and free way to make beautiful graphics very quickly.

6) For the love of your favorite deity, make a website and put a clear link to it on your social channels. Enough with the MySpace pages that don't load. There are gorgeous 'plug and play' solutions out there now and if you are lost at where to start, let us know and we can help.

7) List your email on Facebook unless you're avoiding being contacted, in which case rethink everything immediately. It's mind boggling how hard it can sometimes be to contact a musician to offer them e.g. a paid gig opportunity.

8) Make your URL's for social media something that's easy and possible to find and tag. facebook.com/mybandnyc = good while facebook.com/myband-6832909 = bad. This is a big deal: people can't properly tag you in 3rd party posts if you don't have a properly setup vanity URL on Facebook. If you're struggling, let us know - we'll show you how to do it.

9) Know your demographic. Targeted genres and age-groups dictate whether you should spend most of your time on FB, Twitter or IG (of course all 3, in an ideal world). e.g. If you're an 18 year old rapper, you need to be dominating Instagram. But remember, that's not the place for just your selfies unless you're a face model first, artist second. Show us your home studio, give us some handwritten lyrics, etc!

10) Engage, engage, engage. If you don't reply, retweet, comment to your fans' activity on your social media pages you're seriously missing out. Did we mention that nobody likes a robot?

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We hope this is helpful. If this sounds like too much work, we agree and want to help. Visit management.livamp.com to see if our social media prep package could be of use. And if not, send us your thoughts or ideas!