Tag Archive for 'groupthink'Page 3 of 8

Our Father, Who Art In Heaven

Published
by
michael lee
on 23 July 2007
in church, faith and theology and groupthink
. 2 Comments

Posts in the Sermon Prep: Our Father series

  1. Our Father, Who Art In Heaven
  2. The Weakness of God
  3. Our Father: Sermon Final

I’m preaching again on Sunday. Just starting to gather some thoughts, and put them out here for public comment, as usual.

This time, I’m splitting a two-part series with our youth pastor, who preached last week. He has been married for less than I year. I’ve been a father for a little over two. We thought it might be interesting to reflect on things we’ve learned about God as newly minted participants in our respective roles. Not “Here’s how to be a husband” or “Here’s a message on how to raise your kids”, Lord knows we have little enough to say on either subject. Instead, the idea is more along the lines of “Here are some things about God that I’m beginning to think about differently since becoming a husband / father.”

So, my turn at bat this Sunday. I’ll post some of the ideas that are percolating as they develop. Stay tuned! Stay alert! Stay pretty! Daddy and Mommy will only love you if you are pretty!

Next in series: The Weakness of God

20 things to do while you’re waiting for your fans to show up

Published
by
michael lee
on 17 July 2007
in art and culture and groupthink
. 46 Comments

I’ve been trolling the posts that I missed while I was out of the country, and ran across Chad’s post about firing up Ye Olde Indie Bande. Rather than giving a specific response to his request, I thought I’d give this, a general list of things to move your music project forward.

Most of the things on this list are the result of observation - APU is like a petri dish for watching the launch of music careers. We have around 50 people at any given time who are trying to become viable artists in the commercial music world. They range in success from those who are signed and touring in support of great projects, to those who can’t even get a pay-to-play booking with 300 other bands at Chain Reaction, and I get a front row seat to their process. They come talk to me about what works, what doesn’t, and I get to listen to their experiences and cull from that data.

So here you go - 20 things to do while you’re waiting for your fans to show up. The first 4 are in order of importance, but everything after that is in wild brainstorm mode.

  1. Change your mindset. Once you’ve recorded the album and rehearsed the band, you’re no longer an artist, your full-time career is now marketing and sales. Congratulations - you’re now a small business owner!
  2. Get on iTunes and other online distribution sites with tunecore.com
  3. Upload your music to last.fm. Your music gets placed on a playlist next to well-known artists with a similar style. I can’t think of anything more valuable to a starting artist than song placement in proximity to fans that don’t know you, but that already like what you do. In fact, move this up to #2 - I think last.fm is more important than getting on iTunes.
  4. Put together an EPK. Make it downloadable from your website.
  5. Send the EPK to your very local paper, the one that writes about school board meetings and the farmers market, along with a friendly email suggesting why your story isn’t the typical I-wanna-be-a-rockstar band story. Local papers are receptive to ready-made content (nice pictures, packaged story), and it will give you some experience in talking to the media about your project in a way that doesn’t come off as pretentious or vain.
  6. Update your website blog. (you DO have a blog on your website, right?) Frequent updates help with your search engine ranking, and you want to be on the first page of results for fans who go googling for your website.
  7. Get your social networking sites up. Make sure you have a presence on MySpace, Facebook.
  8. Find 10 blogs that you think your potential fans might read. Make an interesting comment on a post. When you fill out the comment details (name, email, URL) insert the link to your website. If people who read the comment find it interesting, they’ll follow the link back to your site. Don’t promote yourself directly in the comment, just make it interesting and relevant to the post.
  9. Somewhere in-between iTunes and Last.fm is Aimestreet.com. You upload your music, people can discover it and download it for free, or a few pennies initially. As it becomes more popular, the price increases. It rewards people for becoming early fans, and rewards artists for gaining in momentum. I love this distribution model, and it’s gaining a massive following among fans.
  10. Find 5 podcasts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that talk about music in your genre. Email the host to ask if you can send them a CD (or links to the album online). Express your interest in being interviewed for the podcast.
  11. Locate 3 artists in your region who are in a similar market (both in size and genre). Check their tour schedule for venues, and start cold-calling. The place they play today is the place you should be playing 9 months from today.
  12. Do a process audit on buying your music online. How hard is it for fans who get to your website to actually purchase your CD? Can they choose a process they are already familiar, or do you force them to do something like download iTunes, or signup for Paypal? It should be as simple, quick, and intuitive as possible for someone who already wants to buy your product to actually buy your product.
  13. Can you accept credit cards for live sales at your concerts? Have a laptop with a wireless connection to Paypal Virtual Terminal, so that you can.
  14. While we’re talking merch table, how easy is it for people who get to the table after the show to continue their relationship with the band? There are 3 pieces of critical info you should have from every fan - name, email address, and zip code. Why zip code? If you’re playing a show in San Jose, every fan with a zip code that starts with 950XX, 951XX, 940XX or 943XX should get a personal email inviting them to the show. Any fan living in Phoenix should not. Excel, or really any spreadsheet program will let you sort data this way.
  15. Put together a list of 10 known artists that you think would have potential cross-over fans. Start a series of posts on your website reviewing their latest album. Be positive, if you can. You’ll start to get links from their fans doing google searches for album reviews.
  16. Take that same list. Find out who manages each of those artists. (Google is your friend). Send an introductory email to the manager, making specific mention of the artist you think is similar, and ask if you can send an EPK.
  17. Head to your myspace page. Find 5 well-known artists who are in your same genre with a large fan-base. Check out the fans who are commenting, and send 20 of them them an invitation to become your friend. Cross-over, cross-over, cross-over.
  18. As an artist, you have 3 products. Your recorded music, your live music, and your community. Does your website allow simple, intuitive access to all three products? If not, time to stop treating your business like a hobby, and hire a real designer.
  19. Setup a google alert for your band name, or for links to your website. If somebody says something about you, or links to you, you should be the first to know! This allows you to be proactive about building relationships with potential fans.
  20. Change your mindset. You’re now a small business owner. If you want this to be your full-time job, treat it like a full-time job. Manage your time and your goals. Put in 40+ hours a week. Run this business.

So what are your thoughts? Do any of these strike you as essential? Or as complete time-wasters? What would you add to the list if your were launching your own band? How have other bands or artists found you, and turned you into a fan?

Comment away, my friends.

The Abyss and The List

Published
by
Chad
on 12 July 2007
in current events, groupthink and miscellany
. 3 Comments

into the great wide open  // under them skies of blue  //

out in the great wide open // a rebel without a clue

Tom Petty

Into the abyss I plunge.  Structure is gone.  Deadlines are gone.  No teaching pastor will be calling me to talk about the message.  No ladies from the worship team are calling to see if there’s going to be a rehearsal.  On Sunday, we will simply arise, and go to church.

Or not.

We’re in uncharted waters, now.

For those of you just joining our regularly scheduled program, here’s the situation.  Last year, we made this record.     It was an art project, meaning we didn’t have any expectations for it.  We weren’t thinking about the future, or marketing, or careers.  We just made a record for art’s sake, because we missed recording original music.

We thought it was pretty good.  We did a couple of concerts, and lo and behold, other people thought it was pretty good too.   Come December of ‘06, my poor little psyche was just about fully cracked from eight years of Professional Christianity, working as a worship pastor.

In January of this year, I resigned, effective as of July 1.  In those five months, we packed up our belongings, rented out our condo, moved back to my parent’s house, did Easter, did the Agape Singers mini and summer tours, and I was done.

My new job is Band Promoter.  I have zero training.  I have only hunger, and it’s gnawing at me, and it will not be easily satiated.

I don’t fear the lack of steady income.  I don’t fear the uphill battle.  I don’t fear the rolled eyes when someone asks me what I do for a living, and I respond… I’m in a band.   What I fear is The Abyss.  I fear not knowing what to do next.

My first order of business, in an effort to begin charting a course towards success, has been making The List.  We got a good piece of advice several months ago from a friend who said, “Make a list of everyone you know who might be able to help you in any small or significant way.  Any church.  Anyone you know in the industry.  Anyone.”

I want to make The List a public project.  If you like The Dailies, and you want to help us out, and you have any ideas of where or for whom we should play, spit them out.  I’d love to hear what’s on your collective mind.

No distance is too outlandish, no lead too obscure.  I know Mike has a stack of ideas for the group for internet promotion, but what about the rest of you?  Which APU people are scattered across the fruited plain, just waiting the opportunity to book some old friends?  You know someone at a radio station?  You know someone who might like our music?

Let’s feed The List.

Addison Road Informal Focus Group, Round 1

Published
by
corey
on 11 July 2007
in church, emerging church and groupthink
. 13 Comments

Hypothetically, let’s say we’re naming a church congregation. It’s tied to a university, so there will be an on-campus gathering, but there will also be a location in a high end retail area. There are 5 names in the running. Contribute your untailored thoughts.

Adytum Mission
The Ark
Table 412/ Table Four Twelve
The Narthex
abbey west

ok, go.

iTunes Tuesday: Chrisette Michele

Published
by
michael lee
on 15 May 2007
in art and culture, audio and groupthink
. 6 Comments

I know Aly really wanted us to start “Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory Tuesday“, but it just seems like a lot of work to do actual thinking about theology every week. Instead, how about this? Tuesday is when the new free iTunes tune drops (see sidebar). That seems like a pretty good way to spend 10 minutes on a Tuesday morning, listening to a new song, and talking about it.

Chrisette Michele

So, this week, the new artist is Chrisette Michele. First of all, I hate her. Not her music, her as a person. I firmly believe that people who use off-brand spellings of their name do it just to upset me.

The song is “Your Joy”. I’m not usually a cynical or jaded person, but I just can’t shake the feeling of heard it already the whole way through the song. Everything seems very formula. The production is clean, nice little double tracked acoustic guitar (I’ll give you three guesses on who produced it … starts with “B”, ends with “abyface”). Her voice is great; she has a “tone” knob on the side of her vocal chords, and can dial up the timbre on demand. Too bad about the song.

I dunno. I’m not thrilled. Man, I was hoping iTunes Tuesday would start out more exciting than this. Maybe I should stir up some controversy. “Chrisette Michele eats babies!” There. That should give the people something to talk about.