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.

Artists and repertoire (A&R) professionals exist to take care of the artists and their repertoire. That means you are making sure that they make the proper records. You got to have an ear musically to make the correct records in any music industry.

The game has changed a lot, and artists are getting signed because they have many followers. A&R has become a popularity contest. The guys doing A&R usually don’t deserve their jobs. They got their jobs because they were homies with somebody at the record company. Also, they know how to find YouTube numbers.

If that’s the case, it’s the reason when you pick up an album, you like two songs instead of enjoying the whole album anymore. Projects aren’t based on the entire package. They’re based on the two singles that they will try to push.

What’s happening with so many artists is they’re getting single deals. Yeah, you can make some money, but the record company is getting burned. It is because they’re not looking for whole albums anymore.

I would have to say hip-hip-hooray for the artist getting paid for your spins. It is preferable to wait until publishing clicks back Spotify paying quickly. It includes all the streaming money that’s there to be made. It’s a great time for artists now if they make great music. If they make great music, it isn’t even a record deal.

You don’t sell your music. No, it’s free. How do you make money? I’m on tour right now. I’m a touring artist. As the music grows, there are always better approaches of releasing. These can include visual albums, concerts, or broadways. There are many ways in which music moves amongst people. I feel like trying to force music into an album intended to be for-sale is obsolete.

There are guys making millions of dollars without selling records. Do you know what I’m saying? Some guys are giving away their albums and making millions of dollars like they sold albums. Some guys are becoming so crucial with their music that they’re giving it away for free. At some point, a kid won’t equate being a real fan unless they’re buying an artist’s merchandise. Some kids will bootleg an artist album in any way they can, from streaming, stripping, downloading, or finding it somewhere. They will not feel like they’re attached until they buy all merchandise.

There are many ways that artists can get right to it, especially without a record company that the game is super-duper wide open. It’s also super wide open for bad music. You had an A&R that had 2,000 tapes on their desk back in the days. They listened to the 2,000 tapes and picked the four that were good. You didn’t have to hear the 1,996 terrible tapes. Now you got to listen to it all.

Considering your attention span is down to eight seconds, you might have something unique in front of you. Then, you don’t hear it because you’ve been going through so much bad music. Once you get to that, you don’t give it a chance. It is because your attention span is gone. You don’t have the time to sit around going through all the bad music again.

We are in a new age, where the artist is in control. The days of finding a manager to save you and get you a deal are gone. You must figure out all the business and make music. It would be best if you found yourself in a position where you’ve been able to generate enough interest and income. You do this to get a bigger fish on the line, to help catapult your career to the next level. Any music education, regardless of it being a physical class or online music education must teach artists to be authentic and independent.

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!

In the music industry, when it comes to trying to get traditional press for what you’re working on, a lot of artists make one of two common mistakes. The first is to get an email list of all these music journalists, essentially spam them, and just hope that one of those emails gets their attention. Doing so isn’t a very good idea because it can give you a bad reputation. But more importantly, if you took the time to actually just learn a lot about a few specific journalists, you could be a lot more detailed. That’s a much smarter personal strategy.

The other mistake that a lot of us make is that we start out shooting a little bit too high. For example, if I’m a brand-new act, I don’t have a lot of fans yet, but I would love to be on Pitchfork or in The New York Times. That’s shooting really high, and it might not happen.

What you can do, though, before you start choosing who you want to reach out to, is to create a map of what you want to achieve and where you want to be at a certain point in time. For example, you might say to yourself, “In the next year, I’d like to be on Pitchfork.” Then, you can think about what sources are smaller and accessible to you, sources that Pitchfork is maybe getting story ideas from, and map your path to them. That could be a shortcut to getting to that top source, rather than trying to start there.

One way to do this is by looking at the digital breadcrumbs left on the internet. A really amazing tool is Google’s Timeline. Something I always recommend is that if you find an article in a big outlet like The New York Times or Pitchfork, that’s breaking an artist, you can look at the date when it came out, put that into your Google Timeline search, and search for that artist to see who was talking about them before the article came out. Nine times out of 10 you’ll find that there were other blogs, people on Twitter, people who were talking about them before the story went to that big outlet, even when the big outlet takes credit for discovering them.

So, I recommend that you take note of the smaller outlets that don’t have millions of readers but are showing up in those search results. Then, do it again with another article by the same writer. What you’ll start to see is that every time they’re breaking a new artist, there are these smaller sources that keep coming up shortly beforehand on the timeline search.

What this shows you is that these are probably places where those big outlets are getting story ideas. I recommend that you start your press path on a map where you’re only taking the time to reach out and connect with the outlets and journalists that could get you to those bigger ones.

By exploring the world of online music education, you can learn much more about getting recognized by outlets and journalists and building your career in the music industry. Don’t wait any longer to start getting the music education that you want and need.

A question that’s asked often is, “How does a music producer get paid?” That answer has shifted dramatically in the music industry the last few years because, historically, record producers got paid based on album sales. They received a royalty anywhere between 3% and 5% based upon their stature and the number of sales that have been made on the record.

That model has changed because sales have decreased. Now, producers get paid a percentage of income. They get a percentage of licensing if they haven’t written the song. They may also get a percentage, in some instances, of any kind of endorsement deals that come out of the song and the success of that song.

That being said, because producers aren’t making the same money and have the same revenue streams, oftentimes, producers will ask for publishing on songs they didn’t write. If you’re in a situation where you’re not able to pay a producer or a producer is producing for you for free, that’s often a great tradeoff. You give a small percentage of the publishing where the producer gets a piece of the songs that they’ve worked on without accepting money. But if a producer hasn’t written those songs and the producer is being paid for their work, asking for publishing is a definite red flag. Make note of this as you continue your online music education.