Music Success In Nine Weeks

I’ve just launched a new CD (African Numbers) and my partner and I are about to start marketing it. We know we need better strategies than we had for previous CDs. We did our best with the first two albums following roughly this course of action:

1. Buy any magazines/newspapers that look suitable for our CD
2. Write a press release
3. Contact the publications and send out the press release
4. Punt the albums on Twitter & Facebook
5. Write and rehearse a show to promote the CDs at schools, in stores, shopping malls etc
6. Contact radio stations

We had some success with these methods, but our campaign was managed rather haphazardly (by us of course!) in fits-and-starts.
Lets face it: We’re first and foremost musicians, and the idea of promoting ourselves is rather daunting. We learned a lot. Some methods worked better than others. But it was difficult to keep momentum and follow up on leads while trying to distribute the CDs and at the same time earn a living from gigs & studio work.
So with the new album we decided to find a way to plan & structure our marketing campaign. This is where “Music Success in Nine Weeks” enters the picture. The book is by Ariel Hyatt, who runs a successful music P.R. company www.arielpublicity.com
Is the book any good? Watch this space… On the 11th of October begins the 3rd Music Success in 9 Weeks Blogging Challenge. If you’ve purchased the book you’re invited to enter the challenge (free of charge). You need to write a weekly blog detailing your progress working through the book. On completion, the blogs are judged, and the artist who has performed the best wins a 3 month campaign (among other things) from www.arielpublicity.com
So if you’d like to follow our progress, please subscribe to the blog, or check in once a week. And comments/suggestions are welcome, we need all the help we can get!
Note: I’m not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the sites/books/people listed above.

African Numbers

A little bit of shameless self-promotion!

The new CD “African Numbers” is finally here. This has been one of our toughest CDs to complete for a variety of reasons, but I feel it was all worth it in the end. We’re thrilled with the way the CD has turned out, thanks to wonderful performances by some great musicians. The album once again features Relebogile “Lebo” Mabotja on lead vocals, and Kelly Petlane on sax, flute and pennywhistle, as well as the Redhill School kids. This time around we were fortunate enough to record one of South Africa’s top bass players, Concord Nkabinde, who not only played some cooking basslines, but also did a great job as a backing vocalist.

I played all the guitars on the album, and Erika Strydom did the female backing vocals. All songs were composed, recorded, programmed and mixed by Erika & me.

We’ve did our best to make the album as “adult friendly” as possible, and have styled the songs on a variety of African grooves, even making use of some odd-meters (Check out the song “The Big 5”).

Listen to some clips over here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/AfricanTreehouse1

Our website: www.africantreehouse.com

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/AfricanTreehouse

And look out for the album in a store near you, as well as iTunes, Kalahari.net etc.

 

Photos from sessions…