Band sites
Out of context: Reply #6
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- shellie0
strangely -- I've done a lot of music sites through different situations so I can relate to this. Here are a few. Some of these may inspire your approach.
Don't expect to get paid unless they're soliciting the work. Changes are it looks like crap because they don't have the budget for it. Even on major labels with major artists, 2-3k might be the max a label will shell out. Sometimes an artist has a specific affinity for the internet and put a couple 1,000 more in out of their own pocket. Not all artists are willing to do that.
To put it in perspective, a brand new artist might get a music video budget of 6 - 10k -- for a music video -- total. An established one might get 10-15k and a lot of the time the artist pays the difference or overages billed back to them. That's exactly why so many music videos suck, and the ones that don't are labors of love from a hungry motion graphics studio before they start winning a lot of commercial work. For websites, you can cut any budget they may have by 2/3 of broadcast budget or they may not have one at all.
Most artists/bands have the most money to spend 4-6 months leading into a new release when they're updating all their shit. If you know they have a new album or EP coming up on their release schedule in the next 6 months, approach about helping to support that specific campaign.
I worked at sony music. That connected me to a lot more of the same kind of work through other labels as a vendor. I've worked with Universal Music Group and a bunch of their sub labels, but you have go through the whole "becoming a vendor" situation -- not necessarily for that specific band you like, through the label's creative services department. You can contact the head of the creative services department with your portfolio and offer to do a capability presentation about your service offerings -- that's a purely informational meeting to get you in as a vendor for that specific label.
But you should also at their management if you really want to do it. I've worked with artists that way, too. Some are surprisingly easy to get a hold of.
If there is a way to holler directly at the artist, you never know -- they may actually be fairly involved in random communication that comes in anyway. I don't know about other artists, but I manage one myself that happens to be indepdent but has a video on mtv and stuff like that. The artist or myself reads almost everything that comes in and visuals are really important to him. If a designer from QBN hit him up about doing some work -- especially on spec -- It would probably happen. Just from showing interest, I'm now involved in all this artists visuals, budget or no budget (sometimes there is a budget).
You just have to create the relationships, but they're never impossible relationships to create. But remember...
None of these people have any time imagining how you fit into things. They live in their own world where they're the star and the center of whatever the heck it is they have going on. To everyone you approach, come with a fully baked idea, schedule, idea of how it will run, etc. Be very clear with your pitch in whatever email, with attachments and the whole shebang because that might be the only chance you get to make a clear point before they pass on you. Sell them on your creative ways first and foremost or they probably wont "get" what you're trying to do.
- Wow, this is gold shellie, thanks for taking the time. Great insights, here.Continuity
- sorry i was having a victory blunt when I wrote this. Hope it helped, though.shellie