I can’t believe this is almost 10 years old….Enjoy! – AR
Online Promotion
Critical Info for Youtube Musicians Who Perform Cover Songs
UPDATE: It’s now 2022, but I wrote this in 2010. Crazy. A lot has changed since then. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section! – AR
[Read more…] about Critical Info for Youtube Musicians Who Perform Cover SongsFinancial Tip for Touring Musicians – The Numbers Don’t Lie!
Years ago when I started touring Europe I was not too financially organized. Primarily because I didn’t and still don’t “do it for the money” – I do it for the love of music and travel. However, deriving “feelings” from looking at your wallet at the end of a tour is a very inaccurate way to do this.
Whether you feel “good” or “bad” you really have no idea what went down financially unless you do the math. You could feel very rich (or extremely poor) looking at the money in your pocket at the end of a tour. What about all the money and credit card bills for the travel, hotels, food? Those expenses may have happened months before – so you cannot tell by looking in your wallet at the end of a tour!
On my first few tours back in the late 1990’s, I’d front the money for the band’s plane tickets, train tickets, food, hotels on nights off for the band, and of course – their pay was guaranteed. It was then up to me to sell CD’s and collect gig income and “pray for the best”.
I can remember feeling as though I was on an emotional roller coaster when I spent money, or when I felt I made some, and in the end – no idea whether I made or lost money because I had no system for tracking the income / expenses.
One year I decided to start keeping track of my income and expenses using a simple excel spreadsheet. If you are touring, and own a laptop this is actually kind of a fun little morning activity – assuming you didn’t party too hard the night before. Any spreadsheet program should be fine – Excel, Apple Works, Open Office – are a few available.
In just about any spreadsheet program, you can set up a whole region of several rows and columns to sum the numbers so your totals of income and expenses. I simply enter expenses as a negative number, and income as a positive number. I even got geeky and have columns for US dollars as well as Euros so that I can translate it all into dollars at the end.
The result? Well you start to see some very interesting things like:
– How much it costs to go on tour
– How much each gig “costs” so you get an idea of what fee you need to ask for
– Where you can cut expenses
– Did you break even and cover costs, and if so, when?
– Most importantly you can come home feeling good when you do earn money, it is inspiration and motivation for the next tour!
Note – even if you don’t earn money a tour can be successful, because the benefit can come from the relationships and fan base you are establishing. Think of that kind of scenario as an investment.
If you are paying band mates as you go rather than in a lump at the end, you can enter that as an expense on a given day – so that the 50 bucks here and there can all be accounted for in case of misunderstandings.
The numbers do not lie. It is totally enlightening to see the numbers added up, and if the spreadsheet does it properly, there is little room for error, as long as it’s set up right.
As musicians we think like artists and not accountants, so this activity may not come naturally. However as we move into the 21st century, we have to be responsible in new ways. By taking care of ourselves financially we end up taking care of ourselves emotionally and that becomes our physical and musical well being too!
These all are in support of the music, even though they may seem like distractions. So – fire up your spreadheet software (excel, apple works, open office – whatever) and start fooling around with this idea. You’ll be glad you did, and this will help your musical life too!
Adam Rafferty – Message to UK Fans & Free Cd Offer
Greets Friends!
This is a big thank you to friends and fans worldwide, but a message especially aimed at my UK based fans. I will be doing some concert dates there April 2-15, 2010.
I get emails constantly asking when I am going to be on tour there and am eager to play there.
This is part of my “full court press” to get the gigging, touring and most importantly – friendship – going full steam ahead there.
Free Autographed CD Offer to UK fans
Just send an email to the email address ukfans at adamrafferty dot com and you’ll get a “secret passphrase” immediately. Of course I will also personally answer your email and we’ll have a nice dialog!
Be the first person at any UK gig to tell me the secret passphrase and you get a FREE autographed CD.
This seems like a fun thing to do. As well, by sending me the email I will get to meet YOU and at a glance see my UK fan base.
Dates are on the itinerary page at adamrafferty.com
See you on the road! 2 minute video message to UK fans below…
Adam
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY3hdIlIjI0]
The Magic of Yearly Goal Setting
Greetings friends!
I am writing you from a freezingly cold December afternoon in New York City. Christmas is a week away, and I have not bought a single gift yet. Tomorrow, I’ll start shopping, I promise!
With each blog entry I try to describe something of benefit to you, and I try to see a principle operation in my life. And it’s not about me being a teacher at all. It’s more about you the reader and I beholding a piece of “real magic” and hopefully learning and observing together so that you can improve your life as I improve mine.
One thing that was a huge turn off growing up was and teacher, advisor or advice giver who didn’t walk the talk. In between the words and the sentences lies the feeling and vibe of truth, and you know if someone is full of bull or not.
I try to make myself the guinea pig before writing or speaking. Whether it’s a musical principle or a life principle I test and observe. Then I speak or write.
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I am reflecting on this past year 2009 and it’s had ups and downs – but I gotta say, truthfully it has had more ups than anything. I attribute this to weekly “mastermind” / accountability meetings with a friend and bassist extrordanaire Paul Beaudry. (our duo album is coming soon fyi…)
I had an awesome streak of goals that I met – I released the Stevie Wonder Guitar Instructional DVD, the Chameleon CD, the Christmas Guitar Celebration CD, I toured for several months non stop, and appeared 3 times in 3 continents on stage with Tommy Emmanuel.
Whew! (How did he do it all? Read on…)
On a weekly basis (when off the road) Paul and I met over morning coffee and acted as “accountability” partners. Each of us would get an hour for our “stuff”. We would advise eachother, tip eachother off to resources and encourage one another. We’d each leave the meeting committing to action that must be taken the following week.
After accomplishing “things” and seeing principles in action you see that the most powerful thing you can do is visualize. You already do, as a matter of fact. If you are envisioning what groceries you’ll buy and find them in your fridge ours later – you used visualization!
Humankind has known this for centuries, and devoted to the power of prayer and belief since ancient times. Now that us humans are going deeper and deeper into the mysteries of quantum physics, it gets more and more mysterious.
What we see in our minds eye, and what we believe is what we get.
It’s very fashionable to talk about this stuff these days, all the LOA and “The Secret” stuff. But doing it – really doing it – and seeing it, is breathtaking.
Paul and I used a system this year by success mentor Raymond Aaron called “annual backwards goals”. The idea is that you envision yourself at the end of the year, going to a New Year’s Eve party and thanking yourself for the goals you have achieved. That’s right, so on Feb 12, 2009 I wrote myself a letter but dated it December 31, 2009 thanking myself for achieving the goals of 2009 that at that time – had not yet been achieved.
What’s super cool about mapping the year’s goals out is that it adds a new dimension to your monthly goals, then to your weekly goals and of course daily goals.
The result? Well this process sets up a picture in your mind, and every action, discussion, email, phone call and breath end up being directed towards the accomplishing of those goals. No, not in a pushy conscious way but in an automated, sub-conscious way. It is as though the goal was a vortex whose gravitational pull you can’t escape. Your mind functions as as a success seeking mechanism.
This works equally well for anticpating bad events and worrying – so one needs to be strong and envision the good stuff. A mental couch potato has no problem seeing the bad in life or worrying. It takes strength to keep one’s vision positive and productive!
I very much hope to somehow empower musicians and artists (and everyone else) to harness this awesome power. These principles for many years were written off as feel good mumbo-jumbo, but what you start to see is that faith, vision and creativity are far more important than what lies in front of you. What’s in front of you physically is already the past, but your vision and ideas are the future.
Quantum physics is proving that the outcome of experiments changes depending on the “observer”. The observer is co mingled with matter and energy and is part of the experiment. If this is the case, know that your observation and vision manipulates the matter and circumstances around you too.
Happy Holidays! More to come on this fascinating topic….