DIY = Decide It Yourself
2007-08-18
You may have heard of “D.I.Y.” which stands for “Do It Yourself”.
I think many musicians have accidentally interpreted this as “Do It ALL Yourself”.
Instead, I suggest you think of D.I.Y. as “Decide It Yourself”.
You should NOT be the only one making your website, engineering your recordings, designing your artwork, promoting your shows, booking the gigs, and all that other stuff. Trying to do it ALL yourself will be a disaster once you have anything happening.
Instead, just be the one in control, making the decisions, but find people to help you. Find someone who gets excited about making your website. Find someone who gets excited about engineering your recordings. Someone who loves designing artwork. Someone who's great at promoting shows.
Yes, it's hard to find these people. But it's harder to watch your career crawl instead of run, because you're trying to do it all yourself.
i reckon it`s just not possible to do it all yourself. if you wanna have any time to play music or just practice your instrument, it`s not gonna work.
This is so true. When we're not touring, Steve and I spend 70% of our time on the web working on websites, promo, social networking, booking, blogging ect. We toured 7 months out of last year and most things just ground to a halt. It's too much to do, and too much to catch up on when you get back home!
That's right........ it is too much for any one, two or three people. You need a team. If you are good at delegating and know what needs to be done find a eager beaver fan and let them do what ever is the most menial things to free you up for other stuff. Put promo packets together return phone calls etc. Time is money and you need to focus on growing your music machine. Anything that you don't have to do, let someone else do. There are lots of fans and friends that would gladly chip in an hour or so. Make a list of people you know and ask "Can you help me bla, bla, bla. Try it..... I dare ya! It works. Now take your free time and use it wisely. Time is the most valuable commodity, thats why they pay you by the hour so use it wisely for yourself. Let others do the other stuff. Try it! You can even trade out their work for free tickets or CD's.
Understanding what the problem is and doing something about it is two different things. Asking others to assist you certainly will help you to stay on track. Finding those that are qualitied to do what they think they can do is another. Professionalism is extremely important, I'm not saying that some of your friends who are eager to help aren't qualitied, but are they professionals or merely amateurs? The music industry as we once knew it, isn't the same any longer. They're cutting back staff that once helped musicians, writers alike. For a fee of course, but the results were quality. Lets look at everything that is necessary today. Promotion, web design, recording production, distribution (thank you cdbaby you cover that) contacting clubs or facilities to host performances, booking. And what I've mentioned is just the tip of the iceburg. Having (1) place to go to receive quality advise from others that have been there done that seems a better way of tackling these problems and not giving up what you love to do best. Create music.
Knowing how to leverage, when and who to leverage with will save you time, money and hours of agony.
Since as DIY musicians we are all actually the most natural of entrepeneur categories, this can be the hardest thing to learn about- how to outsource.
For those of us who went to school- it's nothing you would have learned about there. And since most of us are struggling to make ends meet and get our music out- there are rarely role models who know how to use the power of leverage in that neighborhood of activity.
You have to have someone who's already done it/doing it -maybe from outside your genre and maybe even from outside the industry altogether. Someone needs to show you how to do it, how to begin to do it and show you very concretely what the financial/time benefits acutally are.
You can struggle along and learn every single lesson on your own- but you will waste a lot of time (and in the long run money)by doing it this way.
Hey guys. This is probably a good general guideline to follow, but there are outliers. My band, The Pinstripes, have been 100% DIY from day one, which was about 5 years ago. Since then, we have booked, financed, and managed 5 tours around the country (and have never lost money on tour... knock on wood!), played over 200 shows, recorded all our own releases, designed and purchased all of our own merchandise, and we've been responsible for any and all internet presence we have.
All of this work has paid off, as we were nominated for, and won, the Cincinnati Entertainment Award for Best World Music Act in 2007. We're a ska/reggae band, and we have 6 or 7 people most of the time, but a lot of the work and oversight is done by one guy, our guitarist Matt.
You may argue that it's better to outsource, but we have found that by keeping control of all aspects of our band, we have infinite creative license, and answer only to ourselves. That kind of autonomy is priceless, if you ask me (and probably any of the other dudes in our band).
check us out!
www.thepinstripes.net
www.myspace.com/thepinstripes
-Cincinnati Ska and Reggae-
cheers, and keep up the good work everyone!
CHRIS
www.DIYMusicians.com
Exactly! We totally agree with you at The Music Void. Read the post that Angel Gambino wrote about DIY Shouldn’t Mean Do it ALL Yourself here:
http://www.themusicvoid.com/2009/07/diy-shouldnt-mean-do-it-all-yourself/
I've been trying to bring myself to do this. I was going to learn web design but I figured my time would be better spent writing, practicing, recording, networking, etc. So I asked if any of my friends knew how to do web design and found out that one of them recently went to college for it. I'm now looking for other things to delegate. But it's still all done under my direction.
I am a singer-songwriter Tally Koren the reason I'm writing to you is as an artist I am doing it all by myself, and even with designing my CD's from the beginning I've had 100% control. I'd like to share with you a few suggestions, which you can hear in my short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKo-jTYEBos
I have just launched the campaign for my new single 72 Names (Hallelujah) which will last for 72 days. Over the campaign I’m exploring the significance of the number 72 in lots of different situations and I would like you to be part of it!
http://www.tallykoren.com / Facebook tallykoren / twitter @tallykoren / http://tallykoren.wordpress.com/
I have been managing a band for a year and a half. Reading through your blog and others has affirmed most of my ideas i have been working on have been correct. Then i read this a realize i am guilty. i find this one difficult for 2 reasons. the band i am helping has no money (until very recently). when i have reached to people, say, offering to build a website, they never follow through.
does one just keep trying until someone actually comes through?
also, its hard to give up that control because everyone does it different than you would. but i am learning that is not necessarily bad nor does it make it wrong.