And “they” are right.

I’ve done a lot of auditions, from both sides – it really doesn’t take long. My wife is a writer, and agents are always saying they know within a couple of paragraphs of a writing sample whether or not they are interested.

How can anyone possibly know within such a short period of time?

Believe it, though, “they” can. If you’ve ever run auditions yourself then you have a sense of what I’m talking about – if someone is totally qualified, if they have talent, you KNOW. You still might need more time to flesh out their qualifications, figure out if they can do all the things you need them to do, but if you’re interested, you’ll generally be interested within 30 seconds.

There is no quantifiable way to describe why this is… but it is. It’s easier to explain by multitudes of examples, and for your examples, hop over to craigslist.org > community > musicians – read a bunch of the postings – doesn’t matter which ones.

You will get a very clear sense, very quickly, about what kind of people are out there, and what kind of people you might potentially be interested in working with. More to the point, you will quickly see who you do NOT want to work with. Postings full of typos, poorly worded, bad pictures – really?

I post auditions on craigslist all the time, and I get lots of responses. I have met some very smart, very talented people. By and large, however, most of the responses tell me immediately that i’m not interested. Specifically:

I’m auditioning singers – I want to hear them sing. Right? I ask, up front, for headshot, resume, and mp3 samples. Think about it – you’re auditioning to be a professional singer, those are the absolute minimum. At least 50% of all responses come without headshot, resume, mp3. Most of those are because they just didn’t read the posting. Some of them are because they don’t have them, but will I let them do a live audition anyway? No. Professional singers have mp3s. Headshots. Resumes. They just DO. So if they don’t have them, I’m not interested.

About 25% send headshot and a sketchy resume – sometimes in the body of an email, sometimes poorly formatted. They usually don’t have mp3. If they do not attach an mp3 or link to music, I can almost guarantee – and I’m over 90% accurate with this – that when I open the jpg of their headshot, it will look like garbage. Taken on a camera phone. Taken by a friend standing next to the register at a restaurant. Why do I know it will look like that? Professionals, the ones who have mp3s, have real headshots. Clear, simple, professional headshots. If they don’t send an mp3, almost guaranteed they are not professional.

The remaining 25 or so %: they attach all 3. Still most of the headshots are retched. Most of the audio samples are terrible – bad mix, bad vocals, bad quality. If you’re a singer, get some decent sound. I’m not nec. even looking for studio quality recordings – sing into your computer mic! Just make it clear, direct, basic. I need to know if you can sing. I can hear a sample recorded on a handheld tape recorder and tell if someone’s got talent. I can hear a bad singer recorded professionally and still tell they are a bad singer.

Of the very small percentage that actually include everything, I’m totally happy to listen to all their samples, even if they send me links to four different myspace pages. When I listen, I can usually tell within 30 seconds of a track whether or not I’m interested. Not to mention, when there is a great headshot, I am far more likely to listen attentively to their music. Is that fair? Absolutely. Just like the clothes you wear to a job interview, and the way you walk onto the stage at an audition, and the quality of paper you print your business proposal on all affect judgement of you, so does your online presentation.

Are there exceptions? Yes. A tiny percentage – statistically small enough to not even be a valid sample. You are not an exception.

Check out craigslist. Think about how you present yourself, your group, your art. Are you destroying your chances of success before you even get to show off?

The most important stuff about your web site is the most basic.

-       Picture: have an attractive, current, **Professional** picture.  See my blog post on picture ideas.

-       Contact information: I honestly cannot tell you how many groups I have been anxious to contact, for gigs, to buy their CD, to pass along potential gig offers … and I cannot find their current contact information!  Really?  What’s the point of advertising yourself if you can’t be found?

-       About contact information: make a central email that can be passed to whoever is taking queries.  group@group.com or info@group.com or something.  Likewise, phone number: better to get a central number that will live with the group than to use someone’s cell phone that will be disconnected when they graduate/move to another city.

-       And that goes for the whole web site: make sure that when the current webmaster graduates/moves on, the site can still be maintained.  Seems like a no-brainer, but if you don’t think about it, you’re going to end up with one of the gazillion web sites in the etherspace that haven’t been updated for three years, even though the group is ‘active’ or ‘current’ or whatever.

-       That’s the important stuff – and it all fits on the front page.  Start with that. 

Check out the blog post “www.nextlevel.com” for ideas about further web site content.

Young performing groups often struggle to get the basic organizational machine going.  Here are some ideas on how to use your time more effectively.

-       the single most important thing you have is your music.  Music.  Music.  If your music is fantastic, you will have opportunities to perform.  Period.

-       The best, fastest, most effective way to make your music better is to perform.

-       See what I did there?  It’s a cyclical conundrum.  Rock on!

-       What I mean is this: it’s all about the music, and music is dead if it’s not being performed.  So, work your tush off making the music great, and get out as early and often as possible to perform.  Perform everywhere.  Perform well.

-       Once you’ve got a good show, then you can start worrying about other stuff

-       (in the real world, I know, it’s not that simple – people get excited when they see you sing one song and they want you to do a whole show and you don’t have the music ready so you have to rush a set together and then you’re so busy performing that you can’t refine the music… life is so hard!  Anyway, apply this advice as you can)

-       Promotional material!  Learn this truth: you only need what will get you the gig.  If you’re applying for major tours on the performing arts circuit, your materials will be fundamentally different than if you’re just trying to get some gigs at local coffee houses.  Know the difference, and don’t waste time on what you don’t need.

-       What do you need?  In my opinion:

1)    music – live first, then recording – a solid demo is fine

2)    good picture – see other posts

3)    business cards / basic web site – give people whatever they need to be able to contact you.  Keep it as basic as possible

4)    everything else: sound system, studio CD, full press kit, promo video… you’ll get to these things eventually, but you DO NOT need them when you are first starting out.

-       when you are generating all this stuff, you will be tempted to try to do everything yourself.  Don’t. Find people to help: I guarantee within the limited immediate social circle of you and everyone in your group there is someone who can put up a basic web site, take decent pictures, design business cards… see where I’m going?  Let people help – they want to!  Frequently it can be beneficial for them to build their portfolios, so ask.  Find those enthusiastic fans / parents / friends who have resources, time, and interest – they can help!

-       That’s also to say that people in your group have skills – college groups, who in your group is majoring in business?  Let them do the business!  Design?  Marketing?  Computers?  Let them use their education in a practical realm.

-       Same thing goes for songwriting, show promotion, recording, … people have skills.  Use them.

Business cards are a very basic marketing tool.  You have to have them.  They need 3 basic things:

1)    Name of group

2)    Contact information

3)    Nothing else.

You can put in fancy fruity pictures, and there are all kinds of fantastic design ideas being used (metallic, plastic, oragami… see below) – but basically, people will take your card because they want to contact you – your card doesn’t nec. have to do any selling for you.  People will want a card after they have seen you perform or otherwise are interested in you.  They are not posters, they are not promo material – they are just contact info.  This holds true for young groups, not nec. for pro groups or for other fields.

Basic, black text on white is perfectly fine, and is, in fact, far better than busy, overly or poorly designed cards.  If you’re just starting, start basic.

Vistaprint: there are companies, like Vistaprint.com, that will print cards for free – you pay for shipping, and they put their logo on the back.  DON’T USE THESE.  They look cheap.  You’re going to pay $5-7 for shipping on these, anyway – you can go down to a local copy shop and get basic cards for about the same price.

You only need 100.  As soon as you give all 100 away, then you can order more.  Don’t order more than 100.  Seriously, who do you think you are?  There’s no possible way, when you’re starting up, that you can use more than 100 in a week.  If you can, count yourself a success and then go order 250 more.  Chances are, you’re going to give away about 25, lose another ten or so, and have a box of 65 cards sitting in your office for the next 5 years until you realize that all the contact information is now out of date and that you should just throw they stupid things away.

So only order 100.

There are excellent and affordable alternatives to plain white cards.  Several companies – I’ve used overnightprints.com and psprint.com with great results – allow you to do full-color, glossy cards, with your own design or image – if you want to make an impression with your card, you can do some sweet stuff with these.  On psprint I actually used the ‘premium flyer’ option and sized it to standard business card dimensions.  You can do funky shapes, rounded corners, all kinds of stuff. 

You’ll run $20-$25 for a run of 100, but the visual impact is worth every cent.  I get oohs and aahs for my cards all the time… but that might be because I have a picture of a bare-chested Ted Kennedy on the front.

 vistaprints.com also does some full-color options, but I don’t know if you can upload images – might be a better option for some of you.  Online print shops regular have massive sales – for example, at the time of writing, vistaprint has $19.99 full-color cards marked down to 3.99.  These are paid cards, with no vistaprint logo on the back (seriously, you might as well walk up to potential clients and scream directly in their face, “WE’RE AMATEUR.”)

Don’t rush to get to the fancy, heavily-designed cards.  Your music is what you are selling, and you should let it do your selling for you.  Just have those cards so people can contact you when they want to – basically, is saves you scribbling your email address down when they ask for your contact info.

And be sure everyone in the group has a couple in their pocket for every show – so when they are mingling after, they can hand them out to the couple of people who will ask.

A couple of cool (if heavily theoretical) sites:

http://yourcardsucks.wordpress.com/

This is more of a design discussion than card discussion – again, for a young music group, simple contact information is all that matters.  A brilliant design is great, and if you have a design scheme that you’re using for web site, press kits, touring bus, shirts, etc, then by all means, put it on your card.  Most of the examples here are from designers or photographers – of course they have to have a brilliant business card!  A young group does not.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.

http://www.smallbranding.com/small-branding/making-business-cards.html

Includes some great tips about content of the card.

And last, if you want to check out bunches of card designs:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailypoetics/sets/72057594104389710/