I was reminded of this question when I saw the promotion for the new Counting Crows record. On Monday, the band announced that they were distributing a free sampler of their new album on BitTorrent. Declaring it the “new radio stations”, singer Adam Duritz sees BitTorrent as a good opportunity to gain awareness for his record and tour.

I hope a lot of young bands pay attention because you don’t have to monetize everything to get your name out there. If you are good, get your music out there and that will be the beginning of your career.

All of this seems well and good, except for one thing. This is not Adam’s music. This is not Counting Crows’ music. Lost amidst the discussion is the fact that the Counting Crows are promoting a record of cover songs. All the songs being distributed for free were written by other songwriters. Who are presumably not getting paid while Counting Crows gets their name out there and sells concert tickets. A source has confirmed to me that they did get permission from the songwriters/publishers before distributing the songs. They also properly credit the songwriters on liner notes with the bundle. But what does that buy them?

One of the artists covered on the project is Richard Thompson. That name may not be familiar to some, but to others he’s a genius. Rolling Stone named him one of the Top 20 guitarists of all time, and he’s also been the recipient of the BBC Lifetime Achievement Award. In a Google search, neither Richard or his band that played the song Fairport Convention, are mentioned in any of the coverage of the BitTorrent promotion. So exactly where is the benefit to him? An artist controlling their work and deciding to let someone use it for free is fine as long as they have the option to approve said usage. The Counting Crows promotion may have the opposite effect and might subtly suggest to artists that it’s OK to distribute covers freely without permission.

I got concerned messages from songwriters for my label DigSin when we announced all of our songs for free. Recognizing this as an issue, we are only working with artists who write their own material. We have no desire to screw the songwriter in the process. In fact, other areas of our deals are actually more favorable to the songwriter than other companies. We’re also dealing with new songs that need to gain exposure and grow in popularity.

In the short term, artists who are not looking at their music as anything more than a means to a bigger end are quite possibly exploiting the outside songwriters who help get them there. Counter to that is the artist who actively does promote a single song and works it to the masses. In this case, as Adele showed last year, the new model of the music business works heavily in your favor. Cover songs on YouTube are now driving enough revenue that some publishers are pushing YouTube stars with big followings to record their songs. While viewers may feel there are one too many music competition shows on the air, the songwriters are thrilled for each new use of their song. Further sync placements in a growing world of content both on network, cable and online also start adding up. Then you have the ability for these revenue streams to come more easily worldwide, and you’ve got a situation where the revenues for the hit grow.

And there’s the rub. Sure, the music business has always been about “getting the hit”. But many critically acclaimed songwriters like Richard Thompson have subsisted on numerous artists covering his songs, with each one netting a little money that adds up to a greater whole. Those covers rarely made hits, but afforded the songwriter a living. It’s that revenue that appears to be drying up. Many songwriters are compensating by performing more, and maybe that’s the solution.

Now, just because someone says they’re a “singer” or a “songwriter” does not automatically entitle them to a living doing so. It never has. Yet artists who don’t write may succeed off the backs off of a forgotten songwriter. It rarely works the other way around.

If we have the same ingredients & follow the same recipe, shouldn’t we get similar results?

The key words of “ingredients” and “recipe” are the important signifiers here. It would be great if the only thing you needed to do is read my book and spit out a big hit. But there’s many more elements involved that can never be taught in a book. Experience is about the only way you can get thru that. Comparing that to cooking is a great way to frame those elements.

Pick the right ingredients. How many times do you hear stories of great chefs waking up at 4 AM to hit the fish market to get the freshest catch? Going to farms to ensure they get the best vegetables? And for that matter, knowing which ones are best when they see it? That’s what top chefs do. You can have the same recipe for a great fish/vegetable dish that they do. Yours won’t taste as good because you don’t get the best ingredients. Never mind your failure to get up at 4 AM to find them. Music is no different. If you don’t know, can’t afford, or can’t select the best musicians, producers and engineers, how is your song going to be a hit?

Follow the recipe exactly. The best chefs follow the recipe they create down to the very teaspoon. Down to the very second. You might add just a half teaspoon too much. Or keep a dish in the pan for 30 seconds too long. The dish may taste good, but is it great? Just having the recipe and following it may not be enough. You have to be meticulous, exact and accurate. It also helps to practice it many times and see how you get it wrong before you get it right. Just following the recipe doesn’t yield a great dish.

Practice until it’s second nature. A chef can have a dish with the right recipe and ingredients and it still doesn’t come out perfectly. For that, it needs to be made with such ease that it’s second nature. The best chefs practice and make the dish repeatedly so that perfection is a foregone conclusion. Along the way, the recipe gets slight tweaks to achieve greatness. Have you practiced to the point of performing with your eyes closed? Does the song feel effortless because you’ve already played it 500 times? All key points to a hit.

Please don’t buy my books if you think that’s all it takes to make a hit. It’s not. You need to commit to it all. Learn how to get the best elements and insist for the best. Make sure you take your learnings and be exact in their execution. Practice until its hurts and you can’t stand. Then, and maybe then, the Futurehit.DNA elements will elevate your song to a true Top 10 hit.

I admit that Gotye does not appear on the surface to fit the theories I discuss in Futurehit.DNA. My first discussion of this song was in August, 2011 after the song had been out a month and was exploding in Australia. A top industry exec friend asked me, “Is this a US hit?” My response then, as it is now, was “It doesn’t really fit modern Top 40 theories, but it has that compelling special something.” There are five key takeaways that you can use as you work to create your own hit.

#1: BE DIFFERENT
The assumption is that you have to make songs that are produced and homogenized like everything else out there. The facts rarely support this. More of the top selling songs in the last few years come from the one that didn’t sound like everyone else. This year, both Gotye and Fun. are dominating single sales without being like anyone else.

#2: USE SUCCESSFUL TECHNIQUES OTHERS AREN’T
People have asked me why “Somebody That I Used To Know” works so well. I just say it’s a new version of the Human League song “Don’t You Want Me”. That early 80s hit had a structure where the male singer pleaded for the woman in the first verse and the woman explained why she wouldn’t come back in the second verse. Gotye copied that subject exactly. While everyone else seems to write direct love song pleas, he mined a tested theme that had been unused recently.

#3: MAKE SURE YOUR SONG BUILDS
Play the first 15 seconds of the song and then the last 30 seconds. The beginning is very soft and sparse, with the memorable xylophone line. The end is a colliding cornucopia of harmonies, counter melodies, and electronics. They are at a significantly higher emotional level than the beginning. The song is a journey to get to that point. Make the song the journey. Flat dynamics and emotions will not win.

#4: PLAY TO THE MEDIUM
People have asked me if this song invalidates the 7 second rule in Futurehit.DNA. It doesn’t because of how the song worked with the platform playing it. In the video that broke the song, the 19 second intro became compelling because of a long tracking shot of the left side of the singer’s naked body. Skin sells, and the mere fact that the open teased sex and nudity kept the viewer engaged. The extra body painting and time lapse stuff that the video is known for kept you there. But the allure of nudity drew the listener in. When it came time to deliver the song to US radio, the intro was cut down to 8 seconds to conform to Top 40′s short attention span.

#5: WORK FOR MANY MONTHS TO BUILD

One thing I’ve been preaching a lot lately is that many bands fail to have a hit because they give up on their song too quickly. They presume the few weeks around the release is all you have to do and if it doesn’t pop, it’s done. The opposite is true. Gotye came out in Australia in July 2011 and peaked in the US in April 2012. I was aware of the song in July, as were many others. But it still took a long methodical campaign with a lot of work by UniversalRepublic to make sure it hit a mass level. Sticking with a song is key to its success. I’ve been working with a song for nearly a year that now has over 300,000 views and 10,000 singles sold. This weekend, the song was shared on Facebook at a rate of about 3 times an hour. There are about 100 videos that use or cover the song on YouTube. This didn’t happen overnight. This was a lot of time and work put into it. With more work to come.

Evolver.FM said that a confidential report from Merlin (the indie label trade organization rights agency) is showing strong revenue growth from Spotify. The reason is an increase in subscribers and usage overall. One would also suggest that the Facebook integration is starting to show up in royalty statements in recent months as well.

As an indie label owner, I get the pain of small micro payments. But I also get the concept of patience. We all dream that our song will be released, spread like wildfire, and generate huge instant digital revenues. Lately, Bob Lefsetz has been promoting the idea that great music finds its audience no matter what, further reinforcing a false notion that great things are instant successes.

But let’s take a look at one of the biggest songs of 2012: Fun’s “We Are Young”. This is the Google search trending for the song over the last year. The song was released in September 2011. This critically acclaimed song produced…barely a ripple. In fact, it didn’t do much until the spike in December which was the result of appearing on the show Glee. Then it dropped off, though maintained a higher popularity than before the show. But it wasn’t until the use in a Super Bowl ad that everything kicked into high gear and the upward ascent began. This popular hit did not go viral out of the gate. It took traditional TV placements for people to see it.

The success occurred because everyone was patient. In fact, the band’s manager Dalton Sim said as much in a Billboard cover story in March.

From my perspective, the success comes from the hard work the band, Nettwerk Records and Fueled by Ramen have put into the band for the last three-plus years to develop a real fan base.

So when it comes to services like Spotify, it appears that patience just might pay off as well. At one point, YouTube didn’t pay anyone. Now they are a top revenue driver for many artists. Financial success at any level is not an overnight story for artists or companies for that matter. However, working towards those greater successes can yield bright futures for all.

UPDATE: As Jim Mahoney of A2IM pointed out, Merlin is not a trade organization, but a rights agency.

One of the things that labels are good at is ensuring their artists receive multiple impressions. They make sure the music is written about in several blogs and publications. They purchase advertising. They generate stories in industry tip sheets. They make videos that get exposure online. And this is before they generate impressions on radio and TV. It is one of the cornerstones of their business’ success.

How many impressions have you received? If you just put your video out there, pushed it once to your social network and got 5,000 views, the answer is probably “not very many”. Certainly not enough to compete. If you stop promoting a week after the video comes out, you’ll get even fewer impressions just because you stopped generating impressions.

Think about some of the viral videos you’ve passed along on Facebook. If you’re like most people, you’ll recognize a friend posting a particular video or article. But unless something is really alluring, you probably won’t actually check out the content until the third, fourth, or fifth time you see it. You needed those multiple impressions before you reacted.

Your music is no different. Make sure you consistently are getting awareness of any sort in front of as many people as possible as regularly as possible. Don’t do one thing and let it be. Do several things and keep doing it. Be in several places. But most importantly, don’t settle for one impression and expect it to do the job.

You’re running a marathon with your music. Keep plugging and keep creating impressions. Eventually it will pay off.

1) Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter campaign has 10,000+ fans shelling out $50 on average for her new material. As of this writing, 418 people have shelled out $300 or more. For the most part, those 418 people are driving the majority of the successful funding. Nearly every classical venue relies on wealthy patrons shelling out similar dollars to keep the concerts going. Amanda’s success will only inspire more artists to venture into benefactors…ahem, excuse me…fan funding.

2) OK Go and EMI no longer see eye to eye. The band leaves the label and gets their first video funded by State Farm Insurance. While corporate sponsors and bands are nothing new (nor is product placement in videos), this was the first time such a relationship was used to fund a band’s venture into the indie world. The fact that an indie act could get such sponsorship is akin to independent concert halls around the country who get the same. Classical organizations can be big groups in their own right, but they’re not all owned by one company. These indie venues rely on corporations to fund specific events as well.

3) Maxwell announced a few weeks ago that he would be performing his classic albums in full at some upcoming concerts. This may not seem notable, but I can’t recall an Urban artist jumping on this trend. Now that the “play the album” trend has spread outside of rock, it’s worth noting that this is not new in classical. If you go to a symphonic concert, you know which works will be playing before you arrive. It wasn’t long ago that you didn’t know what a band would play when you saw them, though you presumed they’d play “the hits”. Now you know a major part of the program before you buy your ticket. Just like they do at the symphony.

4) Many articles in recent months have talked about vinyl’s resurgence. One of the reasons most cited is the sonic quality that vinyl offers but MP3s do not. Caring about the sound of the music is a hallmark of the classical listener. While there have been periods of pop music’s sound quality being a concern, it hasn’t seem as pronounced as it is now. Typically, the young pop fan never really cared. Now they care about it. Throw in the quality of Beats headphones and the audiophile discussions rank up there with those who appreciate a good Mahler.

5) Jack White has been at the forefront of the vinyl movement. But taking it a step further, he offers singles for sale on his website in two series: the Blue Series of artists traveling thru Nashville and the Green Series of non-music related items. Deciding which series to support feels very similar to the packages of concerts one would purchase for the classical season. Do we go symphonic? Chamber? Bundling like-minded items from one organization under one umbrella spurs awareness and sales. Something that has been successful for classical organizations for years.

While these projects may have made a lot of money, they had years of making no money to get there. Instagram had no revenues for several years before getting purchased. The Avengers was a comic book 50 years ago and was set up with many years of Super Hero movies with varying degrees of success. Amanda Palmer has been pushing hard for nearly a decade to activate an audience of 10,000 people to respond in this manner.

This new climate is producing a new kind of artist: the Marathon Musician.

The artist that will persevere is the one that’s willing to stick it out thru every sort of hardship to get to a career. That career may have a huge hit. That huge hit may never spawn another. However, the quick fix hit is something that every artist has to accept is unlikely.

Data abounds showing that most artists need to be a Marathon Musician to succeed. Around 2005, the music critic world was salivating over acts like Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand and how they would change the musical landscape. Each of those acts put out 3 albums and have had several years since they’ve released anything. They’re still active, but since the buzz has died down they need to run a marathon to continue to win.

The hip cognoscenti have proclaimed many musicians over the last decade to be the “next great thing”. One Marathon Musician who was able to avoid being a flash in the pan: Jack White. Jack ran a marathon, albeit one on his own terms. The end result for him became creative control, a diversity of artistic endeavors, and finally receiving a #1 album last week after a decade of slogging away. This from a guy that most people on the street would vaguely remember is the one that made the “dum da dum dum da dahhh dum” sports anthem in their arena. While the other mentioned musicians have released 3 albums since 2005, Jack has released 3 White Stripes records, 2 Raconteurs records, 2 Dead Weather records, a solo album, and produced countless singles.

My new label, DigSin, hasn’t scored a runaway hit yet. However, I expected to run the label like a Marathon Musician. I’m working with artists that want to work hard long term and I hopefully will give them the support to do so.

An artist I publish, Jenn Bostic, is reaching some milestones this week. She crossed 500,000 views on her YouTube channel, with a second video, “Snowstorm” crossing the 100,000 view mark. She’s sold over 10,000 downloads and is embarking on an East Coast tour with another one of my artists, Connie Lim. She didn’t achieve this overnight. I first met Jenn 2 ½ years ago. She is a Marathon Musician. Knowing what she’s got next gives me confident she’ll keep going the distance.

The success of the music business is chiseling away day after day for tiny successes that bring you a step forward. Most people can’t handle it. Those with the drive and work ethic will get to the top 10% just by the desire to persevere. Being a Marathon Musician isn’t easy. Few can do it. But those that can will cross the finish line with more pride and success than anyone else.

Are you a Marathon Musician?

Amanda Palmer has pulled off the biggest music hack to date!

Now for those not familiar with my new book Hack Your Hit, this is a huge compliment. To me, a hack is a way to work the system in a positive way to circumvent road blocks and get to your desired goal. In this case, a hit story. To most people, the story is that Amanda raised half a million dollars for her new album without a record label. The truth is a veritable stew of ideas feeding off each other all focused in one place (Kickstarter). To break it down:

25% of the revenue to date is pre-selling a tour.

The first category to sell out was 25 acoustic “party” dates at people’s houses for $5,000 or more. That means that at least $125,000 of the campaign came from people paying for a show in advance. Amanda could have done just a tour pre-sell and her fans would have supported in the same manner. By adding it to a new album promotion, she was able to raise visibility. She would also likely have known that these would be in high demand from her fans and sell quickly. Since her “goal” was $100,000, all she needed to do was sell tour dates and she would exceed her goal. Which brings me to:

The campaign underplays her worth to appear more successful.

I don’t believe that $100,000 was ever her true goal. Amanda likely knew she’d do more than that in house party revenue. Her previous Kickstarter campaign also raised more than her current goal. But setting the goal low so you can exceed it is a very smart hack. The story becomes how much she raised in excess of what she expected. This leads to more awareness which leads to more pledges.

Multiple campaigns are bundled into one to appear larger.

Amanda’s pledge drive is now being billed as the most successful music campaign on Kickstarter ever. Which is true. But in actuality, this is three campaigns. It’s promoting a new record, an art book and a tour. Most people would say these are separate projects with separate promotions. Combining them gave her a higher visibility for the new record.

The majority of the revenue is not from the new record.

Amanda’s new album appears to be the strong selling point. It’s the first item in the description and she uses more all-caps descriptors than other items, such as “BIG, LEGIT”, “BEYOND EPIC” and “BAD-ASS”. But when you add up the sales (as of now) of people just buying a download, CD or vinyl, the revenue is approximately $132,000. That’s just over 25% or about what Amanda is making from the live shows. Certainly, the people buying the concerts, art books, and art shows get the CD too. But if they were getting it solely for the music, that’s all they’d buy.

I think Amanda is brilliant. To survive in the DIY world, you’ve got to stick out. To stick out, you need to hack. Amanda didn’t get to this place overnight. This successful hack is the result of years of hard work building a fan base. But it’s also years of building up knowledge of what works and synthesizing it into something that works on a very big level.

Hacks in music are smart, strategic marketing at their best. Amanda’s Kickstarter campaign does just that. It’s also a reminder that even people with big fan bases can’t just “release the record”. To the fans, she is delivering everything they want in a very impressive presentation. To musicians who look up to her, they should be recognizing the hacking strategies that truly made this a record-breaking success.

A food manufacturer or the supermarket that shelves the food?

A clothing designer or the department store that decides to carry the clothes?

A musician or the store that carries the music?

The distributor carries the power. You may not like it, but it’s a fact of any business. If you don’t want to accept that this is the order of the world, then don’t go into business.

A story a friend once told me. Around 1994, Pepsi wants to enter the bottled water market. Everyone said they’d never succeed because the market was dominated by Evian and Perrier. Also, nobody would want purified tap water over spring water. They entered the market anyway. Within a few short years, they owned the market. Coca-Cola belatedly launches their water brand in 1999 to catch up. As of 2009, Pepsi’s water brand, Aquafina, was still the #1 selling bottled water in the US.

How did Pepsi succeed with arguably a product that is not as “high end” as spring water brands? The answer was distribution. They leveraged every supermarket and convenience store to make sure their water was available. If they’re not in the store, they can’t sell. If they can’t sell, they don’t lead the market.

Another story. I was working with a musician who was slowly building up DIY success. Steady increases of download sales every week. In one week they sold the equivalent of what they had sold the previous 26 weeks combined. Why? A store featured them on the front page. Distribution wins.

Distributors are more successful because there are less of them and it’s harder to create. He who offers something of high demand that is hard to find will win. One can fight to get more money from a distributor, but only when one has the leverage. Only 3 companies really have that leverage in the music space. Only a few dozen artists really have that leverage in the music space. But even then, you can only get a bit more money. The distributor will always get bigger bucks.

If you’re in this to make money, realize the distributor will be more successful than you no matter who it is and move forward.

This morning, I heard an interview by Warren Littlefield about his new book Top Of The Rock. He talked about how Cheers was the lowest rated show in its first year. He talked about how Seinfeld struggled to find an audience in its first year. What had changed to make those shows explode? They scheduled them with other hit shows to give them proper visibility.

This morning, I read a Lefsetz blog post saying great music doesn’t need social networking to be big. To quote Bob, “You just have to make great music.”

Which one of these stories doesn’t belong?

Let’s pare down to the truth. Believing you don’t need to music marketing at any level of quality is ridiculous. Thinking that releasing songs in certain places at certain times is not a key idea is to live blindly. With so many choices, marketing and strategy is an essential part of any successful song. Social networking just happens to be the easiest and cheapest way to do it today. But if you choose not to tweet, be prepared to spend big in other places. Even if you’re fantastic.

At the same time, you do need to read the tea leaves to know and believe that what you created was great. NBC stood by Cheers because they knew it was great material that needed to be seen. Crema makes great coffee to accommodate the new office workers. If it’s not great, no amount of marketing, strategy or luck will change the equation.

Believing you can become successful just by existing is the worst decision one can possibly make. There are far more examples of long-lasting hit entertainment due to savvy marketing and strategic placement than examples of entertainment hits that “just happened”. Think all you need to do is make great music? Play the lottery. Think you need to put in hard, strategic work to find success? You’ve got a shot.