MuzicNotez Crew Interviewed by IMP Founder James Moore
Independent Music Promotions founder James Moore has interviewed us for his site, and we felt it was such a well done interview we would post it in our magazine as well to share with all of you an inside look at who we are, and what we’re about. In this interview we reveal our personal thoughts on how indie musicians can achieve success, our favorite MuzicNotez artists and the future of MuzicNotez.
View the original posting of this interview on IMP here
Today’s industry interview is with the very ambitious MuzicNotez Crew, Nick Galien and Mike Behn – co-founders/owners of MuzicNotez.com. They provide independent artists with a valuable community, a magazine and a dizzying amount of services. In my contact with them, they have been extremely prompt and helpful, so I assume it’s the same with artists who deal with them as well. I hope you learn a thing or two from their insightful responses here.
- James Moore: What, in your opinion, are the major things independent artists need to be doing in order to get their music noticed in today’s music industry?
- With this new age in the music industry the market is drowned with aspiring indie musicians, so as an independent artist you need to flood the market with yourself and your music in as many venues as possible to get yourself heard. You need to go viral as your book “Your Band Is A Virus” suggests.
Just as much as always it’s a must to play as many gigs as you possibly can, paying ones, free ones, contests (battle of the bands), anything to grow your fan base and show what kind of show you can put on.
As in any profession, networking is key; no connection is a bad one. Musicians can always benefit from collaborating with other musicians (our MuzicNotez generated collaboration list) and share notes on what’s worked for each other or hidden gems in the industry. Any industry connection is always good to have as a musician, such as indie magazines, booking agents or venues.
- James Moore: What qualities do you look for in an artist that make you really want to promote them?
- Above all obviously the skill level of the musician is very important to the quality of the music they put out, however with any indie musician skill can grow with them as time goes on. With such a large market of aspiring musicians it goes a long way to be unique and stand out throughout the crowd. If an artist doesn’t have passion for music and what they’re doing though, nothing else matters, passion drives musicians and it’s a must! They must be determined to actively promote themselves using all reputable sources.
- James Moore: MuzicNotez appears to be much more than a blog or music reviews website. It’s an independent musician’s community. What are some of the services available to artists on Muzicnotez.com?
Yeah that’s for sure, we’ve touched base in as many markets as we can to grow the possibilities an indie artist has with us, increasing their odds of success. The biggest thing we do that differentiates us from other social networks is our Free Promotional Rankings system of which rewards our members with free promotion as they grow with us. Basically the more you promote with us, the more we promote you for free and everything is dynamically tracked for you. Along these same lines is our NotezWorthy Ratings system of which dynamically ranks all of our audios, videos and members into top 10 indie lists that are featured throughout our site, magazine and newsletter.
As for other promotional services we offer to artists, we invite you to search around our site and see for yourself due to the immense offerings we have, however our main resources revolve around our indie MuzicNotez Magazine. We promote artists audios and videos in monthly magazine issues, as well as individual artist/album reviews and interviews. On top of just musician promotion, we also research and bring our artists the best indie resources and suggestions that we can find to save them time.
We also have promotional subscriptions for artists, such as our E.T.A. Press Kits (E.T.A. = Emerging Talent Agency), our Online manager to manage an artist’s social networks to save them time, and promotional campaigns ranging from all different levels and small monthly fees.
Our MuzicNotez Battles are an online battle of the bands basically allowing artists to see how they rate against others, as well as a great way to get their fan base involved in supporting them. Ultimately the winners and losers all receive additional free promotion, it’s a win win!
Finally we have our MNotez.com E-Store of which contains custom apparel/merch (with your bands logo), opportunities for ads throughout our site/magazine, and our Hippie Zone for those so inclined! The internet is obviously for musicians these days, and sometimes a great website and its design can be make or break for both industry connections, as well as your fans to understand what you’re all about in a limited amount of time. For this we recommend Pixoliastudios.com for any web design, development or marketing you need.
- James Moore: Do you find that most artists are still worried about selling CD’s and mp3’s or have they moved beyond that? Our current methods of music consumption are primarily free.
- Obviously artists and bands feel as if they want to make money off of their time and career of being musicians, however as an indie musician I think in today’s market they’ve realized they just want to get their music out there, and to become heard. Once they do that and create buzz about themselves, they can blow up and make all the money they want off of concerts and what not, but in the beginning it has to be about the love of the music to have success later in our opinion.
- James Moore: Who are some of the most innovative acts to grace the pages of Muzicnotez, and what made them stand out?
- Well this is a really tough one to narrow down… so we’ll pick some of our favorites in each genre basically. As for rap, we have to go with David James out of FL, he makes his own killer beats, has an amazing flow and delves into all different kinds of genre’s and dominates them all.
When we think of Rock N’ Roll first thing that comes to mind is The Black Saints! You can definitely hear the 80’s influences in there sound, and there’s just no way you can’t put up a rock fist and bob your head to every one of their tracks. We’re looking forward to seeing The Black Saints this year, especially at Summerfest opening for Halestorm July 8th.
As for just an all around amazing musician at everything he does, we have to go with Andrew David Weber. He was born to be a musician and ranges from any genre he likes, and any instrument he wants. He’s been in several bands over the year, currently on tour with Whiskey Of The Damned, and has his own solo career as well. He’s also a paste MuzicNotez Battles champ!
- James Moore: What plans do you have for the growth of MuzicNotez in the future?
- We plan to continue our search for great up and coming indie musicians, and do everything in our power to help them become heard. We offer a wide variety of promotional opportunities already through our site and magazine as listed above, however we continually are looking to grow our promotional reach and resources to help our musicians succeed. We have a long list of developmental ideas to implement in the future that we can’t exactly get into the specifics of just yet, so just stay tuned to MuzicNotez to see what happens, because this is just the beginning!
We know that strength lies in numbers and are always looking for more opportunities to work with indie industry leaders such as Independent Music Promotions. Anything that we can do to promote each other’s musicians will definitely be equally beneficial for us all in the future.
One thing we know will never change is our personal connection with our members, we always have and always will personally listen to all of our artists and go out to personally promote our best talent in any fashion we can. There’s nothing we love more than waking up every day to more new music to check out, we’re musicians ourselves and music is our lives, we owe it all to our dedicated musicians and members and know that we would be nothing without them.
We want to thank you for the opportunity to work with your site Independent Music Promotions, and to help us, as well as our musicians to become heard, thanks James!
