Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Love Smells Video – Financial details

So, The Mustache Club just released a music video for “Love Smells”.



It’s a short music video that barely lasts 1 min 13 seconds. Simple concept: Pantaloon Descendo drags a fish around and brings it back to the sea.

The video was shot over the span of two days (March 23-24, 2013) in Trenton, Ontario (2 hours east of Toronto).

We chose this location because it’s an industrial town, which means barren and desolate landscapes would be plenty. That’s exactly what we were going for; we wanted to be able to shoot the video guerrilla-style without having extra people in the background. Set up quickly, shoot, then move on to the next location.

An isolated and desolate industrial city seemed like the perfect setting for this.

We also chose Trenton because if drove south for 1 hour, we’d have access to a remote shore by Lake Ontario, which was needed for some key scenes in the video.

So, how much did it cost?

Well, let’s break it down…

Gas bill – $150
Friday night: Drove from Toronto to Trenton. 200km

Saturday: Drove around Trenton: 50km

Sunday: From Trenton to Point Petre (sea side shots): 75km
From Point Petre to Trenton: 75km
From Trenton to Toronto: 200km

Total: 600km, $150

Food – $130
Ok, that one’s easy: we had to eat over the course of those few days.

Because we were very focused during the shoot, we skipped lunch on Saturday and Sunday. 

So we only ate out four times:
Saturday night and Sunday night: $100
Saturday and Sunday breakfast: $30

Hotel - $200
We slept at the hotel both Friday and Saturday night, which allowed us to get up early Saturday morning and start filming without having to drive from Toronto to Trenton. All in all, $200 wasn’t too bad for two nights, but it’s the one single expense that was the highest.

Props - $65
-Fish – $55 (7x 8$)
The whole concept of the video revolves around a fish, strapped to a chain, being dragged all across town and back to the sea. Choosing which species to go for was based on size and color. I’m no fish expert, but if memory serves me right, it was some sort of bass.

With all the dragging around, I had no idea how the fish would be able to withstand the constant friction and abrasion (turns out I was able to do it using only one fish).

One of the key scenes of the video features Pantaloon Descendo throwing the fish back into the sea. This is probably the expense that annoyed me the most. Only buying 1 fish would’ve been risky: it’s way too easy to miss a throw, and then that would’ve left me empty handed. Once the fish is thrown into the ocean, it’s not coming back. Back to nature!

So, just to make sure we caught enough good throws on camera, I bought 7 fish, at $8 each. Every time I threw a fish in the water I thought “well that’s 8$ I’ll never see again” – not the best feeling.

-Soap, 10 $
For a specific scene, Pantaloon Descendo needed to wash the fish with soap. You’d think 1 bar would’ve been enough, but I had to buy several different soaps just to be able to run camera tests, because soap comes in different colors. Bought some blue, green and white bars. Turns out the green one was the best.

Hardware – 97 $
In order to drag the fish around, I needed to get a suitable chain (12 $). I had to choose between silver and gold colours. In the end, I went for gold because I feared silver would’ve been lost over rocks and asphalt. I could’ve bought both types, but I felt pretty confident gold would be the best. Turns out I was right.

The chain was tightly wrapped around the fish to make sure it wouldn’t slip off (fish tend to do that), but it would’ve become loose quickly from all the walking around. In order to strengthen the chain’s grip around the fish, I also got thin wire (8$) that allowed me to weave it between the links. However, to make sure I’d be able to cut and twist the wire to my liking, I also needed to get pliers (12$). 

Since the shoot lasted 2 days, I absolutely needed a cooler (50$), ice-packs (10$) and hard ice (5$) in order to keep the fish fresh. Otherwise it would’ve stunk up the car real quick.

Clothes – 140 $
I bought all the clothes from Zara in January 2013 during their end-of-year sale. I wanted something that looked kind of badass yet wouldn’t be too flashy, without overpaying.

Sneakers: 30$ (orig. 80$)
Since the video involved a lot of walking, I wanted to wear something comfortable yet didn’t look too relaxed. That’s why I chose black sneakers with a white sole. They didn’t look too youthful, and the white soles attract the eye and help emphasize the feet’s motions as they slowly move forward.

Jacket: 50$ (orig. 120 $)
A mix-n-match between leather and jeans, with golden studs. The idea was for the gold studs to match the gold chain and have some kind of visual unity.

Jeans  30$ (orig. 80$)
To be honest, there wasn’t too much thought behind the jeans I chose, aside from a black pair that would create a seamless black effect from the sneakers to the pants.

Sweater: 30$ (orig. 80$)
Chose a black and green camo sweater that would complement the jacket without being too visually overpowering. 

In the end
All in all, I spent $782 on “Love Smells”. Pretty expensive weekend.

However, let’s put things in context here:

Food-wise, we would’ve needed to eat anyways had we been home, so I can’t calculate that as a true expense. I also kept the clothes, as well as the cooler, pliers, icepacks and soap so I can’t fully count those as expenses. Two years after the shoot, I still use these items.

Once we take those out of the equation, the video ended up costing me $440.

Not too bad for a 1 min 13 seconds video.

Do I expect to make my money back? Hell no. It’s an expense.

But it’s a pretty cool expense.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Dealing with haters

Pantaloon Descendo is not for everyone.

I know that; I’m the one who has to market it. As the artist creating it, and as a label owner whose task is to move the copies, I’m fully aware that Pantaloon Descendo is definitely not for everyone. Not the easiest act to market.

It’s a “love it or hate it” kind of an act. Which makes it both easy and hard to market at the same time:
a) Those who love it are easy to convert into true fans.
b) Those who hate it tend to be pretty vocal about it. It’s a part of the game, I’ve accepted that.

The love part is great. My ego loves to be stroked. Who would have thought?

The hate part is even better! The lyrics are confrontational, the humor is off-color… If you hate it, it just shows me I’m doing something right. 

Take this situation here. One Reddit user, "JunkFace", who purchased a copy of 7 inches of bliss, posted pictures of the vinyl – a gesture that’s always appreciated.

In the comments thread, “mawnck” gave his endorsement to the product, which is really cool. Then, this other user, “rusy”, saw fit to write a thorough point-by-point analysis explaining why Pantaloon Descendo sucks. 



That comment was extremely confrontational. But it’s the kind of feedback I have to be willing to face if I’m putting out confrontational material. I could have easily been affected or hurt by the comment, but the fact is, it’s just not for him.  

This is how I handled the situation:


I find that adopting a classy attitude is the best way to deal with haters. 

Be the better man, get the upper hand.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

November Update

Wow, the last few weeks have been extremely hectic. 

The good kind of hectic.

To summarize:

1) We launched the music video for “The Candyman” on October 27. I will post a thorough analysis of what that was like in the next few days.



2) We’ve tried a few different marketing channels to get The Mustache Club known out there. Essentially, we now know what works and what doesn't. That's a major win.
3) We’re in pre-order mode for 7 inches of bliss until November 15. So far, the pre-launch has been very positive and we've moved 20% of our copies. That provides the drive to continue.



All in all, the last few weeks were very interesting. I'm extremely eager for the ones to come!

Friday, October 17, 2014

Creating a promo campaign for The Candyman video

Due to the recent spike in visits and interest sparked by unexpected attention on /r/vinyl due to this post, I had to improvise a lot. I wasn’t ready to take orders for Pantaloon Descendo's upcoming 7-inch EP, I was even further away from releasing it.

So, I had to rush everything and figure things out on the fly: I need to capitalize on this surge otherwise I'm going to miss out on this opportunity.

As a result:
  • The official release date for 7 inches of bliss has been set for November 15, 2014.
  • In order to support the release, The Mustache Club will be releasing the music video for The Candyman, a song featured on 7 inches of bliss. This has been set for October 27, 2014. 


Because the video will be released so damn soon (10 days from now) -- and I tend to be kind of clueless when it comes down to marketing my own art -- I had to figure shit out reeeeallllyy quickly… So many questions…
  • How would I get organic engagement?
  • Would I annoy the crap out of my friends and family asking them to share the video on social media the release day? I always hate it when people I haven’t talked to in years try to do that.
  • Would I go for paid advertising? That can be a bit overwhelming when your advertising budget isn't super high...

In the end, this is what I ended up going for:



In order to figure shit out, I went on /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers and asked the following question: Bands/Artists who tried paid advertising through Facebook, what was the experience like?

I’m extremely grateful for everyone who took the time to answer me back, it really allowed me to figure out what I need to do. The feedback went from “Waste of time and money” to “It really works well if you do it properly”

I understand some people's campaigns didn't work properly. But I feel like maybe the value they provided didn't

Based on redditors’ comments, I was able to identify these few key points:
  • Do not fish for likes.
  • Targeting is key: interests, location. Not doing so will attract click-farms and devalue your Facebook page’s worth. 
  • Creating engaging posts 
  • Testing over a few days helps understanding/identifying what variables work and which ones don't
  • “Boosting” posts (paying to make Facebook push your post to more of your organic “fans”, since it automatically ) is what works the best, as long as it provides good value. Ads and “sponsored posts” do not work as much
  • “Boosting” to “friends and family” instead of targeting people by interest/location provides engagement through peer validation

As a result, I will run different campaigns over 5 days that will help me identify what works best (if it ends up working at all) for all future releases.

The last few days have been extremely intense, everything is moving at lightning speed. 

But it’s very exciting!

Monday, October 6, 2014

The small-scale value of a targeted Reddit link

Last week, I had a sudden spike in visits on this blog after a post thanks to Reddit.

If you have no freaking idea what post I’m talking about, itwas a blog post that discussed the economics of DIY vinyl

Over the last few months, I've been working on hand-drawing 100 sleeves for an upcoming vinyl release by Pantaloon Descendo. After I was done drawing everything, I thought it might be interesting to share the numbers with people because they’re not numbers we typically tend to be privy to. 


(Pantaloon Descendo’s hand-drawn sleeve for "7 inches of bliss")

The post made it all the way to the top of /r/vinyl. Probably because:
1) it was targeted right: it was a blog post about DIY vinyl that I showcased on /r/vinyl, so I reached the proper audience there
2) it provided valuable insight about DIY vinyl production, and
3) it had a good title that hooked people and made them want to click through


I can tell the blog post fared well because of the upvote/downvote ratio, which was over 80%. If 4 out of 5 people liked it, I consider this a success.


Over the course of 3 days, the Reddit post directed roughly 2,400 visitors to the blog.


Initially, I really wasn’t prepared to convert potential visitors into sales; The Mustache Club’s Web site isn’t even fully set up to accommodate sales. 

In order to actually be able to take sales, to improvise and invite people to e-mail me and then proceed to invoice them via PayPal, instead of having the convenience of a Web store. Old school shit. It worked.

The whole thing has been very educational.

What I've learned

The Reddit post directed 2,400 unique visitors to the blog. Out of those 2,400 unique visitors, 8 contacted me saying they were interested in the product. Out of those 8, I managed to convert 6 into a sale.

So, it took 2,400 unique visitors in a highly-targeted context (blog post about producing DIY vinyl record that reached a vinyl-focused group) to make 6 sales.

And, with 6 sales out of 8 leads I have a 75% conversion rate, for which I can only assume that the price ended up being prohibitive ($10 for a 7-inch record is on the higher end of the scale). If a 75% conversion rate of leads into sales is where I'm at, I'd say I'm faring pretty good. 

Overall, it takes me 400 unique visitors with a highly-targeted message to a specific audience to generate one sale. 


Not bad at all. 

Thursday, October 2, 2014

A personable approach to sales is key

10 years ago, I was very active in the music business, both as an artist and a label owner. My music-related activities greatly helped me pay my way through university. However, after university, I drifted away from it. Climbing up the corporate ladder and establishing a good career can be extremely time-consuming.

I tried to keep on playing and recording, but I didn’t have enough time. In fact, setting up everything for my new label, The Mustache Club, took me over 4 years.

4 years of working here and there on Pantaloon Descendo: recording a ukulele track one night after work, recording a vocal track on a Sunday afternoon while the spousal unit is out to get her make up done... All in all, a lot of isolated efforts here and there, but nothing concrete.

I’ve been working on it alone for 4 years. It gets lonely, and it’s ridden with huge moments of self-doubt… “Is it worth it?” “Will people like it?” “Will it just be a forgettable product?”

Despite the self-doubt, I kept on going forward. Fighting in isolation against procrastination.

However, over the last few days, Pantaloon Descendo and The Mustache Club have gained a lot of unattracted traction thanks to a recent reddit post.

It's been generating unexpected volume of traffic and sales, which is really nice.

Sales are great.

Ultimately, sales are the oil that fuels the engine.

I love making a sale. It’s the ultimate form of validation. It’s someone saying “I’m willing to give you my hard-earned money for something you did”.

I’ve been away from music for 10 years. I’ve been away from music sales for 10 years. I’ve missed it.

But most of all, I’m realizing that I really missed the one-on-one contact with customers, and the relationship that evolves through every sale. An e-mail inquiry often turns into threads of 5 to 20 replies that have nothing to do with the sale in the end.

I really missed that.

Let’s be honest, Pantaloon Descendo is not the type of band that will massive amounts of copies: I can handle a one-on-one approach.

I’ll definitely make it a part of The Mustache Club’s business model.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Always be ready for a sale - I wasn't

Yesterday, I blogged about the economics of producing a DIY vinyl sleeve for Pantaloon Descendo’s “7 inches of bliss” and posted it on reddit in the /r/vinyl subreddit.


To my surprise, the post did really good and was upvoted way more than I thought it would. That means the post gained traction and went up in visibility on reddit, driving good amounts of traffic to this blog.

To put you in context: before I published the post on DIY vinly sleeve economics, I had 187 pageviews total for this blog. After I posted it on reddit, this is what happened:



You can see a spike. 

That's definitely a spike.


At the moment of writing this current post (24 hours after the article on DIY economics), it had been viewed 2137 times (so far). To a lot of well-established bloggers, this is nothing. But for me, this means worlds. 


It's been viewed way more than any of my previous posts:





In all honesty, when I posted on reddit, I wasn't trying to make a sale. 

My aim was simply to provide information on the mechanics and costs involved; if other people can learn from my experience, I thought it could help them.

However, I was not ready for people to actually be interested in ordering copies. The release date isn’t set for at least another 2 months. I just thought it would be cool to showcase the product and provide some metrics. 

Man, I wasn't ready for that.

In fact, the web store isn’t even ready yet; the simple option of ordering through a few clicks is not even functional yet. 

That’s dumb, I know. I should’ve been ready. I wasn’t.



But then again, surprise customer interest is a good problem to have.


I had to come up with a solution.

I offered interested people to e-mail me at The Mustache Club's email address, which would then allow me to invoice them via PayPal. Thankfully, my PayPal account was already set up.

Or so I thought.

After I created my first PayPal invoice, it asked me to confirm my e-mail address: can't send the invoice yet.

Crap!

I don't have access to my The Mustache Club e-mail account at work; I will have to wait until tonight to confirm my PayPal account. 

Re-crap!

I hate to make people wait.

Re-re-crap!

That will be a valuable lesson: always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always be ready for a sale.

***

As a way to counterbalance the fact that the ordering process was a little bumpy, I decided to mail advance copies to all redditors who order by Friday. Instead of asking customers to wait until it's actually released in 2 months, I thought it would be a nice gesture to send it now.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

7 inches of bliss – The economics of DIY vinyl

I’m currently working on the release strategy for Pantaloon Descendo's “7 inches of bliss”, which I will be laying out here sometime in the next few days.

It's taking a bit longer than anticipated to come up with all the details, because I'm freaking clueless when it comes to music marketing.



Uhm, how do you marketing?!?

While I’m ironing out the details for the marketing strategy, I thought it would be interesting to explain some details on the production of the sleeve for “7 inches of bliss”.

Honestly, the initial decision to draw all of them by hand was a cost-cutting measure. Pressing 100 7-inch vinyls with printed sleeves would have cost $1,500. On the other hand, printing them with blank chipboard sleeves (solid brown-ish cardboard sleeves) was $1,300.

So, according to my initial calculations, if I were to draw them myself, I’d actually save $200.

Turns out, drawing them was quite an endeavour. In pure DIY style, this is what it entailed:

FRONT SIDE:
1) Write out “Pantaloon Descendo” in a stylish way (7 minutes)
2) Draw the stickman (3 minutes)
3) Color the stickman’s face (1 minute)
4) Draw the stickman’s face (1 minute)
5) Color the rainbow (7 pencil changes:  4 minutes)
6) Write “7 inches of bliss” (2 minutes)
7) Add all the little metallic-colored sperm (2 minutes)

Total time for the front side: 20 minutes




BACK SIDE:
1) Draw 3x big sperms (3 minutes)
2) Lettering track list and numbering (4 minutes)
3) Contouring 3x big sperm (2 minutes)
4) draw all additional colored sperm (2 minutes)
Total time for the back side: 11 minutes



Total time per copy: +/-30 minutes.

30 minutes for 100 copies equals 50 hours.

So, it took me 50 hours to save $200. 

Was it really worth it? 

Based on time alone, every hour worked on it saved me $4.

But that’s not all there is to it. Let’s add the cost of the art material I had to purchase:
- it took me roughly 20 archival pens, ($2,50 each). Chipboard is really rough and ate through the archival pens’ tip very early.
- three white pencils ($1 each) to colour the face. 
- 7 coloured pencils for the rainbow ($1,50 each)
- 5 metallic pens to draw the sperms on the rainbow ($3 each)

Total art cost: $78.50

So, if we factor that in, I saved $2.43 per hour (or $1.215 per copy) since I was able to produce 2 copies per hour.

All in all, it took me 50 hours to save $121.50; not exactly a sound investment, because it means I worked at an hourly rate of $2.43. My day job pays waaaay more than that.

But…



The sleeves look fucking amazing!

Given the amount of time versus the money I saved… Would I do it again?

The answer is a reluctant yes, only because it looks really really good.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Business cards and temporary tattoos!

To go along with the launch of The Mustache Club, I printed business cards. On the front side, with The Mustache Club information, and on the other side, Pantaloon Descendo details. I just received them and I just wanted to share them with you!

Here's the front:



And here's the reverse side -- the written logo actually reads better in person: 



I also printed some temporary tattoos with Pantaloon Descendo's logo for a future promotional/branding campaign.


Everything's coming together just right!

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Popular Problems in the music industry

Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only dink out there supporting the CD industry.

I don’t purchase as many as I once did. Maybe one every two weeks. Once upon a time, I bought roughly 10 new CDs a month. I guess I would purchase more; I’m just not that interested in a lot of new bands. So I’m just purchasing albums from artists I already love, whenever they release new albums. I’m that guy who goes to HMV to purchase the latest album on the release day.
But I’m still out there, supporting the CD industry.

Call me dumb, but I’d rather pay $12 and get a physical CD than pay $9 and only get the mp3 version. 


Earlier, I picked up Leonard Cohen's new album, "Popular Problems". Leonard Cohen has always been some sort of a visionary. Or maybe it might be more accurate to say he carries an aura of wisdom. Anyhow, I like to think his aptly-named album carries a secondary meaning that relates to the recording industry...

Physical versus digital; purchase an album or pirate it; try to sign with a label versus stay independent... 

"Popular Problems" in the music world indeed!