Guitars at an Exhibition ~ Volume 1
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Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 1 is no longer available for sale.
However…
…if you are interested in being a professional musician, here is a little lesson about how this album came to be that will help your music career:
One of the fastest ways to promote your music to more people is to play on a compilation album with other musicians.
(Tip: these musicians should ideally play in a style similar to yours. Because if they don’t, you’ll waste your time and resources promoting your music to people who won’t like it anyway.)
The more artists can be involved – the better. And each artist should contribute 1 song to the album. (This is much better and smarter than having fewer artists contribute several songs each.)
Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 1 was a great example of this strategy in action.
All 10 musicians (myself included) split the costs of recording, manufacturing and distributing the album.
This meant: we could release the album a lot faster compared to doing it on our own. Since the available budget and resources to create the album was multiplied by 10.
All of us were in the early stages of our music careers when we released this album. And having to pay just 1/10 of what releasing an album would normally cost was HUGE for each of us.
More importantly:
Each of us got exposure not just to our own fans, but also to the fans of every other musician featured on the record.
In the case of Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 1, we made 1000 copies of this record and each musician got 100 copies. Each person was free to do anything they wanted with the CDs. (Everything from selling them to giving them away at shows.)
Some musicians chose to sell it (and keep all the money as profit for themselves after their investment was recouped.) Others chose to give it away for free.
Whatever the case, making money from this album was a secondary goal.
The primary goal was to use the album as a promotional tool for other aspects of our careers.
Here is what this means for you:
If you want to promote your music, but struggle with:
- investing money into releasing your own record
- finding enough people to promote your music to
… get on a compilation record with other musicians. This is easier to do now than it ever was before because of the technology available today.
Doing it will give you all the benefits of promoting your music to not just your fans, but to the fans of everyone else on the record.
And besides: you get a credential of having your music on a real record. This puts you on the music career map as a professional musician and someone the music industry should take seriously.
Whether you choose to sell the album or give it away for free as a promotional tool is up to you. The important thing is to put it together.
Plus: you get the experience of putting together a professional record that will help you when you release your own (full-length) album in the future.
For more help with your music career, check out the Music Careers Mentoring Program at: https://tomhess.net/MusicCareer
