Music Business

Sharing Backend Royalties (or not!)

Imagine this scene.  You’ve laid down an incredible piano part, a great vocal, and a passable drum line.  You’re thinking this song would really be better with a real drummer, and you know just the person.  You call them up, send them the track and they love it.  You know how to integrate their performance, you know how to be flexible and collaborative, and you’re confident the track will soar because of your friend’s influence.

But when you think about paying for that work, things get a little iffy.  Maybe your budget is tight and you’d rather not spend anything, but your friend normally costs $200 a session.  What can you offer?

8 Pitfalls to Avoid While Building Your Music Business

This article first appeared on SonicScoop.com. I reprint it here and encourage you to check out their super informative site! It’s a jungle out there.  Or a forest.  Or maybe a desert.  It could be an ocean teeming with sharks.  Whatever it is, we can probably all agree the music business can be a frightening …

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The 5 Best Reverb Plugins Compared

This article first appeared in FlyPaper by Soundfly. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to check out their courses. You can get a 15% discount code on a subscription using the promo code AJTRUMM15. Reverb is like water. You can live without it for a few days, but eventually you’ll die. …

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Making money in music is scary. Subscriptions may help.

This article was written originally for rebilly.com. I repost it here because maybe it’s useful information. This isn’t comprehensive, and the point was to sell Rebilly as the subscription service you need, but still. Rebilly might indeed be the right way for you to do it, or perhaps Patreon or another solution. You’ll have to …

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Cull the Herd (where do I submit my music??)

You can’t be everywhere all the time. Still, it’s hard not to fall into the trap of trying to do just that. In the music business, there are thousands upon thousands of gatekeepers, promotional outlets, and other “opportunities” where you can submit your tracks. Since promoting music is largely about submitting and submitting and submitting again, you can’t simply ignore this aspect of the business.

Chasing the Timeless Sound

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk! There’s one term that’s a death nell when its associated with a record. It strikes fear in the hearts of producers, partly because nobody wants this brand, …

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Feeding Back

Improving your tracks by soliciting critique This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk! Normally in the audio world we try to eliminate feedback.  Nobody wants that high-pitched caterwauling ruining an otherwise perfect performance.  That …

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