The New Music Seminar – Los Angeles, February 2nd, 2010 – Part 4

(Continued from part 1, part 2, part 3)

Martin Atkins of Tour:Smart and Invisible Records with one of his rules for success

The Fourth Movement – Your Live Show & Tour: Simple Steps to Cut Through the Glut & Reach the Magic 300 Ticket Mark

Before I get into the notes from the panel, I’ll continue the story of Loomis and the Lust from the previous post.  So they gave them a fair shot by playing the video that we were supposed to see.  Then we voted with our cell phones….and the winner was….undecided.  Loomis and the Lust and Nikki Lynette had tied.  This meant that the winner would be decided by a live performance at the end of the seminar.  (to be continued…)

Conductor

• Dave Lory

Players

• Martin Atkins (Tour:Smart, Invisible Records)
• Eliott Lefko (Golden Voice, AEG Live)
• Kevin Lyman (Warped Tour)
• Martin Winsch (Mountain Entertainment)
• John Pleeter (Creative Artists Agency)

“Practice for Catastrophy” – Martin Atkins on practicing for live performance

Notes from the third movement:

• Hook up the stage hands.  A little bit of love for the people who help you goes a long way.
• Don’t just practice in a comfortable, air conditioned rehearsal space with everything dialed in just the way you like it.  Give yourself obstacles and challenges in rehearsal, because that’s how it’s going to go in real life.
• Don’t listen to your friends.
• You can make a living somewhere around the point where you can draw 300 people in multiple markets.

Check out Tour:Smart: And Break the Band by Martin Atkins

• Be the best band in your county before you think about leaving the state.
• Don’t set out to build the great wall of China in a month.  Just start laying bricks.
• Always look at the positives of each show and play each show as if it was your last.
  

  Martin Atkins asks if there are any Rockstars in the house, before showing this slide...(click to enlarge)

• Take an accounting class.
• Know the market you’re playing.  Don’t tour blindly.  Have a plan.  Make Data Driven Decisions.
• You have to be brutally honest with yourself and you have to have a great work ethic.
• Always throw muffins into the crowd.
• You now have to earn your money in the music industry.  Inflated salaries are increasingly rare.

“Always have at least two shirts to sell.  It’s not ‘are you going to buy a shirt’, it’s ‘which one of the shirts are you going to buy?!”- Martin Atkins

• Great tip from Kevin Lyman:  Energy drink companies will often give bands branded trailers to haul their gear in.  It works out for them because of the advertisement they get while you tour with their logo all over your trailer.
• Don’t be afraid to politely ask venues to hook you up with a meal and a few drinks.  They will often oblige.

“We are now being held accountable” – Kevin Lyman on the results of the change that the music business has gone through

Martin Atkins practicing a little known rule of success - always throw muffins into the crowd.

Tom Silverman closed the seminar with a conclusion that answers his original question, ‘why are people still buying music’?  He cites Susan Boyle as an example of why people buy music.  It’s because they’re buying the story.  It’s the same reason why Elvis and the Beatles produce more money now then they did at the height of their careers.  We like to buy into a good story.  What’s yours?

…Speaking of stories, we got to watch a live performance from Nikki Lynette and Loomis and the Lust to determine the winner of the $25,000 prize package.  Nikki is a good performer, but without any live instruments the music just didn’t seem to interact with the room.  It felt like I was listening to a CD.  Loomis came out next and put on a solid show.  Voting was open for 5 minutes and we were able to view the results in real time on a screen above the stage.  Loomis and the Lust won with about 2/3 of the vote.  I think they could have a bright future ahead of them.  If nothing else, they were able to get their damn song stuck in my head all day!  That’s a good sign for them.

This concludes the longest blog post of my short career.  Here are some photos from the event and some more people you can follow on twitter.  Thank you and good night.  zzzzz

Follow on Twitter:

Martin Atkins = @marteeeen

Vans Warped Tour = @vanswarpedtour

IndependentRockstar = @independentrock