Jazz Congress 2020 in Review

by Susan Frances

Monday, January 13, 2020

Building Buzz for gigs in the post-listings era

• Google Analytics will tell you which site people came from when they click on your link.
• Facebook business manager and ads manager uses pixels to find out where people came from when they click on your link.
• Connect to your audience with personal stories.
• Post listings from other jazz magazines, jazz radio stations, jazz clubs, education outlets to build a community hub that will drive audiences to your site.
• Create a human voice on your site.
• Send out newsletters to subscribers once or twice a month.
• Post live videos on Instagram, especially on youtube, where people can always find it through a search.
• Create content that is theme related. For mardi gras post music, events, videos that relate to mardi gras.
• Create a mix of content – one big band, one swing, one Latin jazz, one classic jazz, one vocal jazz, one improvised number, one fusion, one soul/R&B tune – change it up on media sites and radio – present a vast range of styles.
• Radio content divided between current, recurrent, and gold.
• Have content that speaks about the origins of jazz and what’s coming up through contemporary jazz pipelines.

Financial well-being and personal planning for concerned musicians

• Managing revenue falls into: 1) Protection such as buying insurance, 2) Equity such as mutual funds, bonds, stocks, and annuities, 3) Reinvesting in your product, and 4) Savings.
• Have a financial plan to help your money grow.
• Two types of financial planners: 1) fee-based planner who takes a flat fee from the client, and 2) a commission-based planner where the carriers (Amazon, Apple, etc.) pays the price for driving business to them.

Building and nurturing your jazz ecosystem

• Collaborations with schools, cultural institutions, and organizations, night clubs, dance troops and theater companies, senior centers, recreation centers, yoga groups, etc.
• Have content that presents the music of the masters and the music of the millennials. Encourage mentorships where masters and millennials teach each other.
• Sponsor or present jam sessions at clubs.
• Meet people where they are, create content that fits into their lifestyles.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Royalties and Rights

• Royalties fall into 3 categories: 1) masters rights, 2) performance rights, and 3) neighboring-rights where the session musicians receive a percentage of the royalties.
• The Music Modernization Act creates a new nonprofit mechanical licensing collective – Sound Exchange – used for digital services to manage the distribution of royalties. Sound Exchange will distribute royalties from streaming music online.
• The Music Modernization Act goes into effect on November 1, 2021.
• mp3 files need to contain the correct pronunciation of each artist’s name; otherwise, the artist won’t receive royalties due to him/her. The metadata needs to be accurate, so royalties are distributed to artists whose work is meant to be rewarded.
• Joining music societies is another way to collect revenue from royalties.
• Have a paper trail to prove ownership of a work to claim royalties.
• Register a collaboration agreement or split sheet agreement during recordings for session musicians.
• Easy song licensing services, music reports, and Harry Fox Agency are portals to register for royalties
• Publishing and recording credits generate a payment from royalties.
• MLC (mechanical licensing collective).
• Digital services like Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, Discogs, All Music, etc. pay into the collective to stream music and pay out royalties.

Jazz Radio’s role in an era of music abundance

• Types of digital airplay — streaming On-demand, HD channels, and social media.
• A mix of free form format where hosts choose the music to play and structured format where the music comes to hosts through radio promoters and labels.
• Gear programming to satisfy donor demographics.
• Create an app that audiences can download and listen to the station in their free time.
• Have hosts create an on-air personality to connect to listeners.
• Have backstories about the music, supported by articles.
• Important for radio to partner with other forms of communications — TV stations, venues that play live music, or universities.
• Post audio interviews on youtube where they will have a longer life span — audiences can find these videos years after they are posted.
• Repurpose material so audiences can always find them.
• Play music that relates to local or global cultural events, holidays, and artists’ birthdays.
• Host live broadcasts on a jazz cruise.
• Have kids host a show.
• Use tags on Instagram and Facebook so audiences can find the videos and articles through a google search.

About Susan Frances:

Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in eastern Long Island, I always enjoyed writing and made several contributions to my high school literary magazine, The Lion’s Pen. Influenced by writers of epic novels including Colleen McCullough and James Clavell, I gravitated to creative writing. After graduating from New York University with a BA in Liberal Arts, I tried my hand at conventional jobs but always returned to creative writing. Since 1998, I have been a freelance writer and have over three thousand articles to various e-zines including: Jazz Times, Blogcritics, Yahoo Voices, Goodreads.com, Authors and Books (books.wiseto.com), TheReadingRoom.com, Amazon.com, Epinions.com, Fictiondb.com, LibraryThing.com, BTS emag, BarnesandNoble.com, RomanticHistoricalReviews.com, AReCafe.com, Hybrid Magazine, and BookDepository.com. In 2013 and 2014, I was a judge in the Orange Rose Writing Competition sponsored by the Orange County chapter of the Romance Writers of America located in Brea, California.