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Music Marketing Web Seminar
Monday, November 26, 2012, 6:30pm EST – Online! Register now on Eventbrite! Members of Folk Alliance International, Folk Music Canada, the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals and Manitoba Music can receive $5 off the seminar price with their promo code. What goes in a bio, and what doesn’t? How do you approach bookers? Does your website have the right content and resources? Do your photos tell your audience who you are? If you’re an independent musician, chances are you’ve asked yourself these questions and more while trying to market your work. With a plethora of music promotion apps online, social media, and countless other platforms, music marketing has never been…
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Help Me Promote You
This article first appeared on RootsMusic.ca in 2010. You can view the original here. Last month, when talking about methods of submission to presenters, I wrote “I would… give a lot of thought before booking anyone who has not at least made an attempt at a professional presentation.” So, does how you appear and present yourself matter? Well, of course it does. It matters in every single social interaction you’ll ever have, and influences the way people perceive you on a very basic level. But setting that aside, how does it affect your artistic career? I know we’re all here for the music, and the other stuff is seen as often…
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10 Things I Want Musicians to Know
This article first appeared on candaceshaw.ca in 2009. You can view the original here. I’ve been a ‘Talent Buyer’ for a decade; first, booking a local bar called The Montreal House, then moving on to become the Artistic Director for the Peterborough Folk Festival from 2006 to 2013. I’ve been a juror for the JUNO Awards and FACTOR, and currently run a mutli-arts festival called Artsweek. I’ve found that artists tend to make the same mistakes over and over, and I hope that by laying them out fairly bluntly I can help emerging artists understand a few things about the bookers’ side of the music industry. Read on for things you can do to avoid…
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Listening to 2012 Festival Submissions: Part 1
I’m entering my sixth and final year as the Artistic Director for the Peterborough Folk Festival, August 24 – 26, 2012. It’s been an interesting job, full of astonishing discoveries of both very good and very bad music and insights into human character. We’ve come to that time of the year where I stare down the enormous pile of submissions and start to chip away at it, one song at a time. If you’re interested in my immediate reactions and thoughts while I listen, you could follow along on myTwitter account, where I mostly bitch about the things that artists do which are driving me crazy as I see them over…
