music business

– Choice Quotes From Market Research Feedback

Chris Klimecky | March 6, 2012

It’s always fascinated me to hear what people think about my music, especially outside the generally protective realm of family, friends, and known fans. In any random and anonymous large group there is going to naturally be good, bad, and ugly responses. It’s important to me to try and get some sense how the songs from my new album, This Journey, would hold up against the mass of music releases the market is constantly assaulted with. Is it actually as good as I think it is? Specifically, which songs are getting the best responses and should thus be put forward to make a good first impression of the new release?

I used a professional music market research firm through Soundout.com to try and get some answers. For each song submitted, I not only received some good market comparison stats, but also the actual unedited comments from the 80+ listeners (who generally seem to have somewhat of a discerning ear and thoughtful comments, though it’s not clear if they are music industry related somehow or not – regardless, it’s completely anonymous).

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– Jennifer Cadence Podcast Posted!

Chris Klimecky | November 29, 2011

My November podcast was a ton of fun as my guest, Jennifer Cadence, has both a great sense of humor and great insight into the music business. Oh, and she’s a fantastic singer/songwriter as well! Multi-talented, indeed. I always come away feeling enlightened whenever I’m in touch with Jennifer, as she always seems to have a few golden nuggets of info that I had never heard before. In this podcast, we not only talk about her new EP Mr. Universe, but she brought a list of five essential tips every musician should follow to help you succeed in reaching your goals. You’ve got to give this a listen and take notes!

We also discuss her challenges with defining her genre as pop, but remaining outside the Britney Spears imagery which would follow that kind of label. How’d she do it? By defining her own descriptive label: “Sapphire Blues.” It’s pop with soul and sass – take a listen and I think you’ll find it a pretty appropriate description. We talk about and play 3 songs from her EP: The title track “Mr. Universe,” “Fallout,” and “Dirt On Your Shoes” (with a great story behind that one!).

Podcast

SiS Podcast: Jennifer Cadence

Chris Klimecky | November 29, 2011

“Sapphire Blues” pop artist Jennifer Cadence is interviewed by SiS Organizer Chris Klimecky. They discuss the origins of her unique pop sound, her new EP “Mr. Universe,” and she gives 5 music business tips all musicians should follow.

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– Roo Forrest Podcast Posted!

Chris Klimecky | July 27, 2011

It’s the end of July already and time to get to know another member of Songwriters in Seattle! This month my guest is Andy “Roo” Forrest – a creative entreprenuer outside of music, who brings both a clever lyrical and harmonic sense to his songs. He has a great blend of pop, folk, jazz, and country that feels familiar yet is wholly original at the same time. To me, it is really indicative of how creativity crosses boundaries, and influences from other parts of our lives can gel in a songwriter’s music to produce something unique to the individual songwriter.

For the podcast, we dive into Roo’s new, self-titled CD out now (“Roo”) and we play a couple cuts from the disc as well as discuss the many great guest musicians he has on the recording. As an independent businessman, we tackle a little bit of music business discussion as well for a different perspective than one might usually get from a musician. As a grand finale, Roo plays a new song live in the studio – a sweet solo acoustic and vocal piece perfect for the summer(!) called “I Like the Snow.” A little Christmas in July for ya!

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– Grammies and More

Chris Klimecky | May 15, 2011

Yes, I realize it’s not Grammy season – that passed us a few months ago. However, I’ve recently taken in a couple of great Recording Academy events with the Pacific NW chapter that have gotten Grammy on my mind! The Recording Academy is the group that runs the Grammies if you weren’t aware. Last weekend was a fantastic day long Producer/Engineer Studio Summit which had great panels with insight into the ever changing music business. It’s definitely a rough road, but passion (and in some cases obsession) seems to still lead to success.

Then on Monday at the beautiful Gibson Guitar showroom in the Belltown area of downtown Seattle was the informational Grammy Awards 101 with VP of the Recording Academy Awards group, Bill Freimuth. Long story short, I now understand the whole process that goes into giving out those little statues, though my chances for getting one is only slight better now that I may submit rather than not at all. I’m really driving to finish up my new album, This Journey, in time to get it into consideration for this year – that’s a deadline of August 31st…I’ve got a lot of work to do!

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– ReverbNation Featured Artist!

Chris Klimecky | April 19, 2011

This is an exciting week for spreading the music – for the next few days I’ll be a featured artist on ReverbNation! They get 15 million+ visitors per month and 75 million+ page views per month so this is an opportunity I’m very thankful for. I also want to thank anyone visiting for the first time – I hope you take a few minutes to listen to some of the variety of songs and videos I have on ReverbNation, then drop me a note or a comment. I love meeting new artists and fans through RN – there is a great musicial connection we all have there which I have not found anywhere else on the web. BTW – they rotate 10 featured artists into 4 slots every few minutes, so if you don’t see me up there, it’s just a matter of timing.

For the indie artists reading this, what has been your biggest single promotional push and how did it come about? I’ve got my fingers crossed that this will be a biggie for me and help get that snowball rolling downhill! I’ll report back on that next week. 🙂

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– February Preview

Chris Klimecky | January 28, 2011

Down to the last few days in January, already? Wow, it’s been a productive start to 2011 and I hope you’ve enjoyed some of the fruits of that labor. There have been two major song releases, a podcast, a start at Twitter and YouTube, my regular blog, and then lots of behind the scenes effort to get all of my web presence pages looking consistent, easy to use, and packed with as much content as the various sites will allow!

There’s still lots more to do and tons of content in the pipeline for February. Here’s a glance at my upcoming “to do” list:

– The third major song release for this early group of new recordings, “Water Colors”: It’s another with lyrics passed to me by Cait Rosellini. It’s got a different feel that I am really digging – those who have heard it think it has a David Bowie sound. I’m a bad judge of these things, but perhaps because of the metaphor-style storytelling? Anyway, I’m excited to have you listen and tell me what you think of it yourself.

– Two new recordings with Americana singer Jessica Lynne: I’ve got two recordings coming with her that are cool variations on already released songs. One is a version of “Colored Life” – you can hear a preview of that from the (horrible visual quality!) live video that was taken of us performing the song together. Jessica has a great voice that fits the song perfectly and I’m very happy to have a fully produced version of the song with her. We also got her recorded on a version of David Rix’s “Carry On” which takes the song in an interesting duet direction.

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– Musicians and “Day Jobs”

Chris Klimecky | January 16, 2011

I was recently pointed to a great little writeup from CDBaby asking the unfortunately neverending question, “Should Artists Have to Work a 2nd Job?” This really hit home with me as I’ve struggled with this for a long time. In fact, for the first time now, I am 100% focused on my musical career in 2011. This is strange and exciting territory for me – when I was in school, I of course had school to focus on in addition to music. Then I went directly into the videogame development industry, where I focused in addition to music. This continued for over 16 years.

I always considered the day job as the only way to fund the musical endeavors. So above and beyond normal living expenses and month to month bills, there was constant gear purchases/upgrades, recording studio time, promotional expenses, cd manufacturing, etc. It can be an expensive passion pursuit, even as I consider myself extremely frugal with my musical investments! On the plus side, I never had to play the part of “starving artist” – which I’m thankful for. BTW – I totally respect anyone who’s willing to sacrifice for dedication to their art. I haven’t been willing to take the risk until now and know it takes guts no matter what level of success you’re having.

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