The music publishing and record businesses really resisted rock and roll and rhythm and blues for quite a while. There were some events that happened in the 1960s, however, that really turned the tables and put rock and soul front and center.

Music had became more sophisticated, leading rhythm and blues to morph into something called “soul music.” In a simpler sense, soul music was rhythm and blues merged with the harmonies, rhythms, and cadences of the Black church. Some of the early specialists in soul music were Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson.

The Father of Soul

There was a very important entrepreneur in the early soul music industry. A man named Berry Gordy owned a jazz record store in Detroit. It went out of business because kids were not buying jazz records anymore, so he decided to create rhythm and blues records.

Berry Gordy, however, did something that no record entrepreneur had ever done before. He created an assembly line, much like the auto plants in Detroit. He had teams of songwriters writing songs and teams of producers working with performers to get the songs onto records. He had a world-class band of in-house musicians called the Funk Brothers. He had his own management and publishing companies, and even his own charm school and choreography school.

Motown was a one-stop shop. It was the birth of something music producers now call “artist development,” with Berry Gordy as its father.

Assembling a Mowtown Track

“I think during the Motown era, the wonderful thing about the entire music company was that artists had an opportunity to develop in so many areas,” comments vocal music professor and record producer Marlon Saunders. Indeed, artists had the ability to rehearse and work through harmonies. They learned how to sing together, be in the recording studio, go on the road, and perform on stage. They also had time to develop as artists.

Motown was a different era, so artists had tremendous hands-on experience happening quickly and in the moment. “So in the midst of everybody being in the room, and everything happening at the same time, your game has to really, really, really be focused. Because, you think about it, if everyone’s in the room and they’re hitting the button to record, one mistake, you got to start over,” Saunders says. “So that means the level of concentration was different.”

We live in a world where people can access on-demand online music education and work towards everything being perfect. It is amazing that we have gotten to that ability. But, as a singer, your subconscious mind may tell you that you can always re-record the song or tune the recording. “If you don’t have that, if that was never something that you could envision, even how you practiced was different,” says Saunders. Singers practiced for perfection, making the skill level different.

The Appeal of Soul

Smokey Robinson wrote “The Tracks of My Tears” for his Motown band, The Miracles. “Take a good look at my face. You’ll see my smile looks out of place,” reads the chorus. “If you look closer it’s easy to track the tracks of my tears.”

“Who writes like that?” asks Kerry Gordy, fourth-generation record producer and the son of Berry Gordy. “You know, it’s like that’s some amazing, amazing writing.” When producers at Motown would receive songs, they would break them down, listen to them, and make sure that they really said something. “And that’s the reason why our songs, 50 years later, are still doing well and still amazing,” he opines.

Gordy takes awe in that he can sit with young people and sing “I guess you say, what can make me feel this way?” Everyone will respond singing “my girl,” the refrain of a now 50-year-old song. “So think about that,” he says. “That is the concept of how we wrote our songs at Motown.”

Gordy is a passionate person when it comes to both the song and to the artist. People in marketing will say that a song is nothing without the marketing. “I say, you’re correct, but it’s nothing without that song that actually inspires the feeling, and the thought, and the passion,” he responds.

One of my favorite examples of marketing upon completion comes from the great artist D’Angelo.

For those of you familiar with his music, he released his third album just a few years ago. I recommend his “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” and “Really Love.”

I think he released the album in 2014. One thing that was previously very frustrating for his fans was that he waited about 13 or 14 years after he debuted his second album to debut his third one. He released a second album in 2000 and then waited until 2014. That’s a really big gap of time.

Many people wondered if the fans were still going to be around to even check out album number three. Would a new generation of fans even know who this artist is when his other album finally dropped? There were all of these questions, right? But regardless of the concerns, the album just came out. There was no announcement. It just appeared one day in December 2014.

The Luck Factor

The third album was quickly both a critical and commercial success. But, when we do a postgame analysis of his success, it’s like, wow, that was really risky. How did D’Angelo even know the fans were still going to be around? I can’t even attribute this win to a specific strategy. The songs are really good, and his fans just happened to be around.

Relatable Content Plays a Role

Where am I going with this story? Even though D’Angelo hasn’t made a record in four years, this fact doesn’t mean that he’s living in another world. Obviously, there are topics in his third album that seem very current because of what’s happening across this country in the streets.

I was listening to it after marching yesterday, and all I could think was that this is the soundtrack to the revolution that I thought I was walking in. It makes us more powerful and more vocal and gives us a presence at a time when we are having an identity crisis in this country.

Music Education

Marketing after the completion of a work is obviously a risky decision. I don’t know many artists who have enough understanding of the music and the culture and how to do it. It’s interesting to think, “OK, he was just putting it out and hoping for the best.” Few artists in the music industry have been able to reproduce this type of success without extensive pre-release marketing campaigns.

An online music education can help you learn more about this and other marketing topics and help you to make more sense of your goals and the type of marketing you want to focus on when you are the musical artist trying to draw interest to your work.

Many artists are collaborating with multimedia artists at this stage in our industry to create a truly unique and larger-than-life experience. It is critical to attempt to create something that has never existed before.

“The biggest thing about collaborating is completely removing your ego. When you remove your ego, you allow yourself to open different chapters that you may not know about that the person next to you may know about,” says Kendrick Lamar.

“I’m going to draw. You’re hearing the music and you’re flowing from your head to your hand,” states Shantell Martin.

“This is why we see many artists collaborating with different people—developing a new world to venture into, such as Beyonce, Sia, and Charli XCX. I try to make a lasting impression on my students by showing them videos of these performances actively including online music education,” continues Kendrick Lamar.

Sia, for example, works with a different visual artist for each show. This exposes her work to new communities and the creation of others in the music industry. And this type of audience sharing is the direction we see our music industry taking. So we must consider what we can gain from collaborating with others to build these relationships in music.

Playback is, in my opinion, one of the most important trends in technology right now in terms of performance. We’ve known about playback for a long time. It started with tape machines, then people in the “Talking Heads” film.

The very first song is on a boombox, which he plays. Then we moved on to CDs, minidiscs, DVDs, and everything else.

However, we now have multi-track playback equipment that greatly assists performers in being able to separate the tracks so that they may be observed blended as well. Triggering these playback devices is an art form in and of itself present in music education.

So there are a plethora of new controllers on the market from virtually every firm that will assist us in genuinely imagining movement within this procedure. As a result of this triggering, some people are developing dance performances.

Another example is the use of video. I know many artists who utilize their videos as the primary character in their performances. Anohni, for example, is someone with whom you’ll be watching an experimental video series. Off-screen, the singing is pleasant.

Sia’s Coachella performance was a prime illustration of this. Right now, the emphasis isn’t so much on the vocalist. It is concentrated on a broader presentation. We’ve seen this with holograms, such as Tupac. Sophie, an electronic DJ who uses lights. People are creating an experience rather than focusing attention on themselves. And I want my pupils to develop their ideas about how to use these multimedia tools.

Technology has drastically altered performance. On stage, you may now generate the sound of an orchestra with just one track. You may also trigger such things using a variety of instruments. Some of it is on display. Some of it is being performed on a saxophone and a piano.

At this point, we can make any item emit any sound. We may also experiment with images, videos, holograms, and costumes integrating MIDI. One person on stage can produce a louder sound than 20 people.

“Give you love, give you love, give you love, give you love, give you love, give you love, give you love, give you love. Oh, my goodness, you’re the one.” It’ll never be finished because the goals are so lofty. Emily Wells sings, “Mama’s gonna give you love.”

This is huge for electronic musicians. We can do everything ourselves, which can be financially beneficial to the artist’s economy.

In the digital age, performance is split into two different areas: linear and nonlinear. For example, if you’re listening to internet radio on NPR or satellite radio, like XM or Sirius, there’s a royalty, a linear royalty, which is different than a nonlinear royalty. For example, if you’re choosing songs not in a row, and you’re not listening to an internet radio station, maybe you’re choosing some of your favorite songs or a playlist that you made on your Spotify; that would be a nonlinear royalty.

Linear royalties are collected by an organization in the music industry called SoundExchange. You register your song with SoundExchange and they collect those linear royalties for you. In the case of nonlinear royalties, like an Apple Music or Spotify song, for example, they pay the artist directly. Those performance royalties can add up, and these days, now more than ever, it’s a main source of income for many artists who are generating a significant amount of spins online. This is important to know if you’re into music education or taking online music education courses.

Last but not least are sync fees. Sync fees are paid any time your song is placed in a commercial, a TV show, an online commercial, or film. That song must be licensed. There’s a master fee and a publishing fee. The publishing fee is collected by your publisher, who quotes on your behalf, or in your case, you quote on your behalf how much you are licensing your song for. In the case of the master recording, that will be licensed by your record company or by you (if you own your own masters).

One thing that I always tell my students is that every single one of them has an “it” factor. So, the process is just figuring out what your “it” factor is about and how you can relay it to your audience in the best way possible.

Finding Your “It” Factor With Music Education

Every single student has a story to tell that has never been told before. Likewise, every student has the capability of speaking to a different group of people that have never been together before. Throughout this class, my students find their “it” factor and who their community is.

Defining Your Role in a Group

I often tell my students to look at the people around them and study their roles. Look at their families, their friends, and their classmates and see what their capabilities are. For example, a cruise director will have a different set of artistic abilities than a peacemaker would have. I try to get my students to figure out how they see themselves within their groups to help them understand what they can bring to an audience.

Persona Performance

Performance is the authenticity of yourself. We discover who you want to be, who you are capable of being on stage, and what character you want to audience to see. This applies to on-stage performance, social media presence, interviews, and more.

There are many ways to think about persona. One example is a person’s alter ego versus their true, authentic self. Many artists believe that once they decide what their persona is, it can never be changed. However, persona is a fluid process that is constantly shifting and evolving.

Persona in the Music Industry

Lady Gaga is an excellent example of how persona plays a role in music. She debuted her project as an alter ego, then, through time, she shifted from one alter ego to another. Creating that conceptual relationship to her persona brought her different kinds of audiences. It also created a story for her to tell over and over again. This project was separated from her persona, which can be healthy for an artist. It allows artists to live their lives without the duality of a persona and a self.

Persona Is a Process

Your intention, narrative, and what you want to do with the persona you have created are what you aim for with this kind of artistry. Do you want to change the world? Do you want to throw a party? All of these things are important to think about when we decide what the point of our artistry is.

Where we want to take and see our artistry helps us to define the storytelling. After this, we can begin to see how the story that we created matches up with the story of our lives. The narrative that we build will become the first chapter of our identity.

Artistry is a process. One day, you might feel like writing a sad song, and the next day, you might feel like writing an anthem. Once you feel comfortable and safe with your own persona, as an artist, the character can shift and change throughout time. David Bowie is a great example of this kind of shift in artistry. He started out one way, then created an alter ego for himself, then returned to who he truly felt like he was inside.

These artistry shifts are all relative to what’s happening at the time. They can be affected by history, politics, and the current trends around the artist. You can really float with your audience to learn what they want and what you want. Making these types of connections lead to a successful journey together.

A great case study of utilizing positive exclusivity is another orthogonal example. Surprisingly, it’s Facebook, not the Music Industry. When Facebook first got started, it was not available to everyone on the planet as it is today. It used to be highly exclusive.

When Facebook was first created, you had to have a .edu email address from a particular school to even use it. At the very beginning of Facebook, you had to have a Harvard email address to access it. A few months later, they expanded to about 20 to 30 more schools.

However, if you weren’t attending one of those schools like NYU, Northwestern or Cal Arts, you couldn’t get on Facebook. Obviously, most of you know that they eventually opened it up to the whole world, but in those first moments when they were very exclusive, there were a lot of components happening. The exclusivity really resonated with people.

Everyone Wants to Be Included

First of all, when you are included in that sort of exclusive phase, you just feel cool. Exclusivity tends to instill a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out) in people who aren’t a part of the club. If you’re included, you feel as though you’re on a train that’s leaving, and maybe other people aren’t taking that ride with you. Exclusivity taps into a higher-level concept called network externalities. This is a vital tactic for a new artist trying to build an audience.

The concept of network externalities basically states that a small group of people who are connected, who actually have something in common, who know each other and who communicate can, in theory, organize to get things done and accomplish a lot more than a huge group of people who don’t know each other. This is why Facebook, even though there were only a few universities using it, was able to blow Myspace out of the water.

For those of you who remember, Myspace was rooted in the idea that you might have hundreds, maybe thousands, of friends, but no one really knew them. No one communicated with them. Meanwhile, the 30 friends you might have on Facebook were actually spreading the product more because they were talking to each other constantly. That’s because they really were your friends.

Connections Are Key

This concept can also be seen in political movements. Many grassroots movements have deep connections with small groups of people when they start. These people are communicating and sharing ideas fast. Often, these movements can outpace something that seems like a juggernaut because people associated with the bigger group aren’t actually communicating. With network externality, it’s essential to get your audience talking to each other.

Perfecting Music by Being Patient

The last part of positive exclusivity, from a creator standpoint — for those of you who write songs, for those of you who make things — is that it allows you to perfect your product before it’s brought out in the open to be judged by the whole world.

People should be encouraged to play their songs and share what they are working on with others early in their creative process, even before they think it’s done. This gives you the feedback you need to make it better. An example of positive exclusivity and music education would be deciding to only play your music in your hometown for the next year before moving on to other towns.

Even if your fans in those other towns say they want you to come play there, sticking to your home venue allows you to workshop the songs you’re creating, perfect them. By the time you open them up to everybody, you know they’re going to work.

Worth the Wait

This method is exactly what Facebook did when they moved from just a handful of universities to the whole world. By the time they made the switch, they knew that they had something solid that the world wanted. It may have been a slower process, but it was perfected in the end.

The 1960s brought lots of change and innovation to the music industry. It’s an era of music frequently studied in music education and online music education.

The influential artists of the 1960s are almost too numerous to mention. On the soul music side, we could talk about the genius of Aretha Franklin.

We could also talk about James Brown, a soul artist who fostered a whole other set of rhythmic innovations that came to be a new genre called funk.

We could talk about Stevie Wonder, who helped incorporate the synthesizer into pop music.

We could talk about Jimi Hendrix, who pioneered a new way of relating to the electric guitar, and in many ways helped to ignite another genre called heavy metal.

For anyone taking part in music education or trying to forge a career in the music industry, it’s important for students or artists to figure out how to think about themselves, and to formulate a plan for the way that they’re going to connect with an audience. So, first and foremost, they need to understand that self-awareness is going to be the key to their success.

In some ways, we have to start from this self-awareness and confidence-building and ability to see your own faults, and also to see all of the possibilities that you have within yourself before you push yourself forward and find your outlet. Finding your intention as a performer is really about looking into yourself and realizing what you’re capable of.

Personally, for some of my music students, I like to have them fill out personality quizzes. The reason for this is that in reality, they allow you to answer all of these questions about yourself that you might not have thought about otherwise. Some people figure out that they’re people pleasers. Some find out that they’re introverts. And the good news is, none of these traits keep you from being a good performer. All of it is really about figuring out what both your weaknesses and your strengths are, and playing to them.

After we figure out our personalities, we can then figure out what our intention is as an artist. This means answering questions like, what do we want to give over to our audience? Do we want them to be hopeful? Do we want them to be introspective? Do we just want them to enjoy themselves? Are we just all about creating a conceptual artistic experience that is abstract in nature? All of these questions are things we figure out when looking at our intention as a performer.

One of the best ways to go about taking these personality quizzes, I find, is to do them in a group or a class, and fill them out together. Then, everybody shares the results with each other, which can sometimes be pretty shocking. Oftentimes, people might take the quiz thinking that they’re an extrovert, and then discover to their surprise that they’re actually an introvert. These kinds of realizations can help people determine who they want to be as an artist.

Some people might find out that they’re a people pleaser, and wonder if that’s a negative thing. Some people might realize that they’re an extrovert, but not actually feel like one. Overall, these personality quizzes are a great way for people to get to know each other, and they can also help us discover the ways that we can best connect to an audience.

If you have a desire to learn more about how to discover yourself as an artist and how to best connect with an audience, consider giving online music education a try.

In this first module, “Building Your Image,” we are going to talk about how we build our audience. We need to define why you do what you do. In the unit “Marketing Your Music in the New Economy,” we look at embracing your first followers. We’re going to think about these areas especially:

• How do we try to guarantee a certain amount of traffic before putting our music out?

• How do we track the sources of big newspapers and blogs to try to get on their radar even when we are still small?

• How do we utilize social media to share stories and empower our fans to market on our behalf?

Leveraging Social Media

I have 1.8 million followers on Twitter, 1.5 million on Facebook, and 1.2 million on Instagram. The fans are more powerful than almost any music industry label. They post my music. They find other people who are searching for new music and send them mine. People pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this kind of promotion.

A lot of artists do not need deals. If they can establish a solid touring foundation, they can make money and pay their bills. They crave that freedom. I feel like a lot of artists lose their freedom when they jump straight to a major label.

Choosing the Moment

In regards to the timing of when marketing actually happens, it’s a really big question to ask. On one hand, some of us might think, “I want to be a perfectionist. I want to wait until the song is totally done to ever tell anyone about it.” Some of us might be more open to getting feedback, and we share every version of it.

The truth is that there really is not a right answer. There are different ways of making a decision about it.

Music Education

Our next plan is to look at three different examples of people who have all marketed themselves super-successfully but have chosen very different times to do so.

Quick reminder: These and other modules provide you with a well-rounded online music education that helps you to learn the ins and outs of bringing your sound or songs into the world and sharing your passion with others. They are also designed to guide you in your chosen industry career so that you can achieve long-term success.

Working in the music industry, a common occurrence for me is that an artist comes in and says, “I got 50,000 plays on Spotify,” or “I got all these streams on Apple Music.” And I’ll say, “Great, so are you making money?” And they’ll say, “I don’t know, am I?” The answer is yes, they’re making money. But without properly knowing their revenue streams and knowing where the money comes from and where it’s going, they have no way to collect it.

Part of your practical music education involves making sure that your song has direction when it comes to the revenue that’s coming in. When you think about revenue streams in the music industry, think about where the money is earned. There’s an entity that collects that money for you and delivers it to you, or to a publisher, or to a label on your behalf. I call it the “armored car model.”

Who is that delivery system that’s collecting money from your song and delivering it to you? In the case of a traditional record deal, where an artist is signed to a label, the label collects the money from record sales for you and delivers it to you per your royalty agreement. That deal is the same for labels of all sizes, whether it be an independent label or a major one like Warner Brothers.

When a song or an album is duplicated, multiple copies are made to be sold. There’s a fee that’s generated called a mechanical royalty. That is the money that a record company must pay to duplicate, which dates back to the old publishing days when song sheets were duplicated. That’s how songwriters made their money, and it’s very similar today.

There’s a company called the Harry Fox Agency that collects those mechanical royalties, and they’re the armored car in the model mentioned above. And after they collect those mechanical royalties, they deliver them to a publisher, or if you’re self-published, to you directly. And currently, that rate is 9.1 cents per song. So, for example, if you have a platinum-selling album with 10 songs on it, you have 9.1 cents, times 10 songs, times a million dollars. That’s a nice chunk of change.

One of the other ways that songs generate money is through performance. When a song is on the radio — the traditional terrestrial radio we call a radio station — that song generates a royalty. That’s called a performance royalty. The armored car that collects that money is a PRO, or performance rights organization, like SESAC, BMI, or ASCAP. They collect that money, and they deliver it to your publisher, or if you’re self-published, to you.

The royalty rate does fluctuate, and it’s fractions of pennies. However, it does add up, especially with something like a big pop song on Top 40 radio that usually crosses over to other formats. A Beyoncé song, for example, could generate a million dollars just from being played on the radio. There’s a fact to motivate you as you continue your online music education!