To get to know Andy and Bill, two of the main character’s in this post’s story, you should check out the previous post.

Or I can sum up up what you need to know from the previous post in a single sentence:

Andy said, “Hey Bill, you give me this, and I will give you that as payment in kind.”

In this post we elaborate further on the tale of Andy (and Bill). Andy’s method of paying his way through life is bartering his live performance of his alphorn for goods and services he needs to survive. Bill owns a bar, called Bill’s Bar. Simple, right?

All is great with Andy as he scores a delicious and nutritious meal of bar food and local moonshine in exchange for a riveting few hours of alphorn cover hits from the French Swiss. Andy finishes his last encore with Sinfonia Pastorella for Alphorn and String Orchestra by Wolfy’s pops Leopold Mozart, then packs up and heads home for the night.

As Andy drags his gigantic wooden pipe home, the door to his bachelor pad is blocked by Larry the Landlord. Last month, Landlord Larry gave Andy a month of free rent, in exchange for Andy playing alphorn at his Highlander costume party. (Andy knew this wasn’t exactly a perfect theme to fit with Swiss mountain music, but it was a month of free rent!) Anyways, Andy stays for a month rent free, his music is marginally well-received at the Highlander party, and he thinks all is fine, right?

Wrong. Larry is pissed. In exchange for his friends ribbing him for mixing genres and themes, he’s had a musician rehearsing for hours daily next door to him for an entire month. And not just any instrument, but one with practical applications for long-range communication and cattle calling. Larry’s had his fill of alphorn music.

Despite the beginnings of tinnitus, Larry is thinking about hiring Andy the alphornist for next summer’s party, which he’ll theme more appropriately around the Swiss Alps. However, it’s almost winter, and Larry has no need for alphorn services for several months.

“I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel with out any means of propulsion” – Dr. Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory

Normally, Andy would have no trouble propelling himself to a solution and out of the metaphor with his alphorn. Instead, he’s stuck, and we’re now going to come up with an alternate solution.

In-kind transactions have several problems, most notably timing constraints.

The quote above is cited from a Wikipedia entry I stumbled across that discusses this example in much less detail and much more boredom that we get when we make an alphornist the hero of our story. That Wikipedia entry, called “Coincidence of Wants” can be found here.

To quickly summarize Wikipedia, the article on coincidence of wants points out that “money tends to emerge naturally” to bypass the limitations “imposed by the coincidence of wants in an in-kind economy.”

So what’s the point?

Randy Pausch ended one of his last lectures before he died by stating, “Time is all we have, and some day you may find out you have less than you think.” This means that time is really the most precious and limited commodity of all. Peter Drucker said that in The Effective Executive: that you can hire more people but you can never really increase the amount of limited time you have.

You can generate, create, or acquire a virtually unlimited quantity of items that possess value. You can work more live gigs and get paid for them. You can create more products and sell them to any one of the billions of people on the planet in exchange for money or more valued items (like stocks or company ownership). Ultimately though, you can’t create more time. That’s one of the main reasons why we have money – to improve our ability to manage our time.

Money = time management tool.

One more thing: the whole reason I started on this stick figure diagram diatribe was as an emotional response to a conversation I had with someone regarding performance royalties, and rights publishing, and promotional opportunities, and management contracts, and similar things along that line. The two-hour call had many deja-vu moments. Stick with me and I’ll get to how this all relates to selling songs and musical instruments in today’s economy. I promise.

In the meantime, please watch this video on time management by Randy Pausch, and think about what else is going on in your life that you can turn into more available time in your life, through the use of trading money or otherwise?

Party A wants what Party B has. They agree to trade something they have for what the other wants.

In this earlier post, I retold the story of an exchange that took place in my childhood literature: exchanging smells for sounds. This is part of a series of posts that build up to some very common questions I continue to receive from people looking for success in the music industry.

Above you’ll see a very very simple illustration. There are two people. Let’s call Party A by the name “Andy” and Party B  by the name “Bill.” They just finished a transaction of commerce. Here’s the exciting details of how it went down:

• Andy has something that Bill perceived as valuable. Bill wants what Andy has.
• Inversely, Bill has something that Andy not only sees as valuable to him, but he wants it for himself.
• Andy and Bill agree to a trade. Andy will give his valuable item to Bill, and Bill will give his valuable item to Andy.

Somehow, Andy found out that Bill has some item. Furthermore, Andy wants it in his possession. Andy wants it bad enough that he will give up things so that he can be the owner of that same item that Bill wants:

• Andy will definitely give up time to think about how to get his hand’s on Bill’s toy.
• Andy will cancel his dinner date so he can focus on acquiring this item. (Remember Opportunity Cost?)
• Andy may trade something he owns to get one for himself.
• Andy might give up more to prevent Bill from having what Andy has not.
• Andy might even risk jail time for the thrill of stealing one of these valued items.

The list goes on, but you get the point, right? If Andy wants this magical item that Bill has, he should be prepared to give up multiple tangible and intangible assets in his quest to acquire it from Bill or from someone else.

The same goes for any business relationship, or deal, or even purchasing a piece of music. The same type of costs apply even when you’re trying to decide whether to drive to the store to buy a new CD, or download it from an online store, or acquire it in a legally-questionable manner like from a file sharing service.

Food for Thought:

What is an upcoming business transaction that will take place between you and another party (Even if it’s just ordering pizza)? How many tangible and intangible costs can you identify that you may need to cough up in order to close the deal?

(This post is the first part of a series of posts regarding the business exchange of goods and services inside and outside of the music industry.)

One of the books I read as a child was a number of Aesop’s Fables, only instead of Aesop and a bunch of personified animals, it was a wise old judge and an unruly village in ancient China. In that book was the tale of a poor man in china who was telling his friends that in order to make his very plain rice more palatable, he enjoyed the scent of the buttered rice floating up from the restaurant below. Meanwhile, the restaurant owner overheard this conversation. To the poor man’s dismay the restaurant owner came upstairs and confronted the man for the theft – using the smell of butter to improve the enjoyment of otherwise boring white rice.

Fast forward to after they arrived at a court where a judge listened to both sides of the story. The poor man became even more dismayed when the judge ruled in favor of the restaurant owner. The poor man pointed out that as the “poor man” in this story, he was as a matter of fact poor, and pulled what few coins he had in his pocket to present his life savings.

The judge in his wisdom thought for a moment and then asked the poor man to jingle the coins back and forth. He then shocked the restaurant owner by proclaiming the debt settled and the matter closed. “The fragrance of butter has been paid for with the sound of money.”

There are two (2) main points I’m trying to convey by retelling this children’s story:

First, I want to point out what is called OPPORTUNITY COST. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the restaurant owner was justified in his actions, and the poor man really was a sneaky thief. Furthermore, let’s take for granted that the judicial system in ancient China operates at warp speed, and the entire story from hearsay to verdict took place in a single hour of time. And let’s say that instead of the jingle of money, the restaurant owner won enough to buy a whole new stick of butter to flavor his rice. Even with so much of this taken for granted, did the gains justify the COST?

This little exercise cost the restaurant owner at least an hour of his precious time of his life, some stress and anxiety, good will, and his attention from what he does best: selling buttered rice to people with money to pay for it. Instead of chasing this distraction to its completion, he could have been selling enough buttered rice to buy MORE than just an additional stick of butter. That hour of time could have been spent positively increasing the good will with his customers, or promoting his business, or hiring a lawyer or assistant to represent him in court, to deal with this and future thefts of the fragrant nature on his behalf. That’s what I mean by opportunity cost. Instead of pursuing an opportunity more within his area of expertise, he was chasing down an opportunity that at best would end in a single payday of limited reward.

Now for the second reason for sharing this story. That reason is that the story is based on a very simple business transaction. Party A has something of value that is enjoyed by Party B. In return for this enjoyment, Party B gives something of  value to Party A.

For these two ancient chinese villagers, the business exchange was mediated by a judge, who decreed: Party A smells butter. Party B hears money. Transaction concluded.

The next few posts will further elaborate on how this children’s story relates to making money in the music industry.

In the meantime, I leave you with a challenge:

In as few changes as possible, can you turn the business exchange of smells and sounds into an attractive modern-day exchange we in the music industry today might actually sign off on?

Get crazy with this challenge. See what you come up with. I’ll give you a whole month to work on it. As a reward to incentivize your senses, I’ll send the winner of the most creative equation this very stick of butter, pictured below.

Prize Butter

The concept that makes this book a unique and valuable addition to a musician’s bookshelf can be summed up in a single word: “Service.” Unlike so many other business development books that teach marketing and sales, this one is geared specifically toward small businesses interested in providing service to customers. And service to your fans is one of the most important principles that MusicForProfit.com keeps trying to hammer home. (See community of raving fans, and  taking care of your customers, and Rule #3 of the 4 business principles to follow)

I have read through it once, and now I’m going to go back for a deeper read a second time. In the meantime I’ve been recommending this book to pretty much everyone who is currently focused on developing an in-person relationship with paying clients.

Two Action Items (one free, one almost free):

• Sign up at ThinkBigRevolution.com and notice how Port profits from this rabid community of fans without trying to sell them anything.
• Get the book at Amazon: Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing and Selling

Beyond Authority: The Principles of Persuasion and Influence from Haas Alumni Network on Vimeo.

In the post a week in tweets where I took the best of my very active week on Twitter, there is a post via @workfromwithin – a video from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. I have repeatedly been referring to this video in conversations with, well, everyone. There is so much content in this video, it’s like a dense book.

If you’re this type of geek like me – interested in sales, marketing, and the psychology behind it, then do yourself a favor and watch this very long video. If you’re super busy like me, then do it in chunks. I’ve been watching it 20 minutes at a time over breakfast.

Here’s a couple of one minute tips I picked up from the video:

• Physical proximity is a strong indicator of the strength of an online relationship (ie you email and connect online with whom you see more frequently in person)
• The “four walls” sales technique is a great way to generate copy that focuses on the benefits of the benefits that are of interest to your psychographic, instead of the features and tech specs. Example: Customer cares about their offspring’s education, not how many entries are in the encyclopedia.

There’s more, but you get the idea. Watch this video and pick one thing that you can apply to improve your daily life and business in a non-manipulative fashion.

Let’s get straight to the point. You are on this page because you need to know how to copyright a song in the USA. (Contact me if you need help with copyright outside of the USA.)

If the song is still “locked in the vault” in your head, and just an idea that hasn’t been written down or recorded on your answering machine, then make sure you capture it first. Right now. Do it.

Did you capture that intangible brain spark in some tangible form you could show me or your mom? Good. Congratulations. You’ve just earned yourself a copyright for your song.

Rather than spend time writing out why you should pat yourself on the back and call it copyright, I’d like to share with you a sweet little video about the way copyright works. The presentation was created for teachers and students, however I think it’s simple enough for an uneducated musician to grasp.

Click on the picture above or the link below to watch the video in another browser window, and then come back here when you’re done.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/copyrightmystery/?#/copyright/

How’d you like that video? Has the mystery of copyright been exposed to the righteous theme of cartoon funk? (Insert chorus of girls singing “Shaft!” but replace “Shaft!” with something less cool and more contextually relevant.)

Now back to your new copyright on your song.

There are a number of steps that you should take between the moment you first capture that song tangibly and create a copyright for it, and that later date when you need to prove that you are the copyright owner for this song, either because you are collecting money or defending your right to collect money. I am not going to get into most of those in this post. Instead I’m going to refer you to a very strongly recommended resource, which you should consult before the essential step of consulting a real live legal professional. My tip is to check out Donald Passman’s book All You Need to Know About the Music Business. Passman revises and updates this book regularly, and it is a humorous and well-informed read.

There is one step that I want to share, and this is my own personal preference for when and how I register my music.

Copyright Registration is at the very end of my to-do list. Before I release my song or send it to iTunes or the distributor, I will definitely register the copyright. First however, I want to finish that song, and all of the songs that will be bundled with it for its debut release to my fans. That means the song is mixed, mastered, and packaged with album artwork, before I submit two final copies to the copyright office.

I register collections of works, not individual songs. By submitting my entire album or EP as a collection of works under form SR, I am registering the copyright of a number of elements of intellectual property at once: the lyrics, the melody and other musical attributes, and even the audio components like sound effects. I also am registering multiple songs at once. I’ve read somewhere that prolific songwriters do the same thing: they take all the songs they can fit on a single audio CD and submit them at once, rather than registering copyrights of songs individually – songs that may never get picked to be performed on a major album release.

There is at least one major drawback to the approach of registering copyrights as collections of works. If I release my 10-song album, and someone infringes on the copyright of every one of my album’s songs, I will receive $X in damages. However, if I had registered the songs on that album individually, and there are ten songs, then I would receive 10 times the amount in damages ($10X).

Frankly, I am not really worried about that. If you are, then you’re welcome to copyright songs individually, but I have bigger priorities to worry about, such as making sure that song becomes a hit, or makes any money at all. Or better yet, making sure that all of my business activities are adhering to the 4 rules I mentioned earlier.

There are some more in-depth blog posts I plan on crafting based on these, but in the meantime enjoy them, and of course comment and tell me what you think.

(photo credit: San Diego Shooter)

If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would be your biggest regret?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask myself.

ASK YOURSELF:

• What would you regret the most if your life were to end tomorrow? Next month? Next year?
• What is stopping you from acting on your answers, so you would have little or no regrets?

• Order a copy of Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture from Amazon.
• Leave a comment about what inspires and refocuses you on what’s important.

From The One Minute Manager to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, it is written that there is only one rule in business. This one:

Wherever you look, in any industry, you’ll find that the first rule of business is to earn more than you spend.