Independent Artist’s Daily And Monthly To-Do List
By Indie Vinny Ribas
As an independent artist or musician, you have a lot of responsibilities. Besides being a performer and a recording artist, you are also a business owner in charge of booking, dealing with contracts, marketing, PR, inventory management and much more. To improve your chances of success in the industry, it helps to know that both you and your business are running on all cylinders. That means insuring that everything that needs to be done is getting done, and nothing is overlooked or forgotten. Here are three short checklists that might help in this process:
Things to do daily (or no less than 3 times a week):
- Post something new to your website, such as adding a picture, updating your calendar etc.
- Post something new on your blog.
- Post something new to your social network sites.
- Tweet something interesting (2-3 times a day).
- Fill your calendar by making booking phone calls until you’ve booked at least one gig.
- Call 3 radio stations that are or should be playing your songs, offer to do a phone interview or stop by when you’re in their town.
- Scout for new fans by contacting the fans of other similar acts.
- Rehearse your instrument and your act.
- Sign up for ‘Google Alerts’ and enter your name, the name of your act, your CD title etc. to see when you are mentioned anywhere on the web in real time.
- Schedule uninterrupted songwriting times or appointments with co-writers (if you’re a serious songwriter).
- Contact music bloggers and CD reviewers and ask if they would review your CD.
- Send out promotional CDs as necessary.
- Send out CDs to people who have purchased them directly from your website.
- Issue and/or sign and return booking contracts immediately.
Things to do twice a month (or at least monthly):
- Send a newsletter to your fans with your updated news and calendar, special offers, personal insights etc.
- Meet or communicate with team members, such as your booking agent, manager, marketer, publicist etc.
- Offer something new for your fans to either purchase or download for free.
- Add a new video to your YouTube channel. This can be very informal.
- Run a contest, a survey or something else that is interactive to keep your fans coming back to your sites.
- Send thank you cards to the venues you just played.
- Confirm your gigs and all of the details for the next 2-4 weeks.
- Check the website traffic on your websites to make sure you are driving a steadily increasing amount of traffic to them.
- Attend music industry events where you can make contacts.
- Check your stock of replacement parts like guitar strings, guitar picks and drum heads.
- Basic maintenance on your vehicles, especially if you use them on the road.
- Send press releases to announce your upcoming shows.
- Rally your street team to promote your upcoming shows.
Things to check as often as possible and fix whenever necessary:
- Be sure your online calendars are all up to date.
- Be sure your band members are content.
- Check your mailing list for ‘bounces’ from typing in the wrong address.
- Videotape or audio record your act to be sure is as tight as it can be.
- Check your inventory of CDs, download cards, merchandise on hand for your upcoming shows.
- Be sure you have enough business cards.
- Insure that your EPK is up to date.
- Test all of your equipment, and especially anything you haven’t used in a while.
Your personal situation may require that you add other tasks to this list or ignore some that are already on it. The bottom line is that taking care of the business side of your career won’t seem so overwhelming if you have a to-do list to follow and you block the time out regularly to get it done.
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