Capítulo 31: People Don't Carry Cash Anymore, So What Does That Mean For Musicians?
People today are going cashless. In fact, more people than ever are paying electronically through their phones, credit cards, and debit cards.
In fact, some stores such as Epic Burger, Sweetgreen, and Argo Tea have become cashless. But what does this mean for musicians? More of your fans and customers don't have cash. And if they don't have cash, how can they pay you?
If you can't take your customers money, you can't get paid. Because cash is becoming more and more rare, you need to be able to take other method of payment. Below are some of the more important changes
musicians should make to deal with today's growing cashless society so you can make it even easier for people to pay you and increase your
business.
1. Make sure you can take your customer's credit cards (at your merch table and everywhere else).
Make sure you can accept credit card payments -- whether it's for performing a service or selling something at your merch table. You
can do this by using services like Square or Paypal Here. Having this one option available can boost sales alone. Always carry your card swiper with you so you can get paid from other people you might do
business with, not just for shows.
2. Work with venues that take credit cards at the door.
We all know what happens at too many venues: a percentage of the covers cash gets socked away by the venue. This makes some venues
are reluctant to take electronic payments at the door even if you sell out your shows and have a draw. But we're already at the point where people are skipping the show because they don't want to pay the
ATM service charge to get the cash to pay for the cover. Stick with venue that handle electronic payments and tell the holdouts they
need to .
3. Use electronic tipping methods.
Passing the hat doesn't work if people have nothing to throw inside it.
Instead, whenever you create a physical tip jar include an electronic payment option as well. One way to accept credit cards for
tips is to use services like DipJar. You can also let people pay you directly through their phone with PayPal.me or add a link or QR code
to your patronage page. Plus, apps like Busk.co allow you to not only take payment, but give fans a download as a reward for tipping you.
In addition to these methods, for business-to-business transactions
consider electronic payment methods such as Venmo, Zelle, and
Apple Pay Cash to allow people to pay you directly.
The best way to improve your music business is to make yourself easy to do business with. This means reducing friction and eliminating hurdles
that prevent fans from paying you. Make sure you create payment options
for yourself and your customers as we continue to transform into a largely cashless society so you can continue to be successful.
How To Avoid Scams: Four
Questions To Ask To
Determine If Musician
Services Are Legit
There are more and more services, websites, and products today ready to
help musicians get music created, distributed, discovered, heard seen, and noticed. Never in history has music been this open and global.
But because the musician market has exploded in size, it's unfortunately
attracted some unscrupulous or incompetent players out to prey on
musicians' hopes and dreams of success.
Here are four questions you can ask to evaluate any service, website, or
product to make sure they're legitimate:
1. Did you search on their name and "scam" in a search engine?
This takes just a couple minutes: type in the service's name and the
word "scam" after it and see what pops up. Within seconds you can
find out what the world is saying about them. Services with
significant customer issues or problems have a hard time
suppressing what the world thinks.
For example, we learned about a service that charged money to get
the song in front of audiences via social media sites. Fans would
rate the song as good, bad, etc. However, a simple search revealed
a bunch of musicians who skeptically sent in junk white noise tracks
to see if they would be highly rated. Sure enough, whether they
sent in their actual songs or junk noise tracks, the same number of
fans "liked" the tracks, thus proving that it was nothing more than a
series of bots that liked whatever you uploaded. Another hint was
the lack of details about the fans that came out of it, something
you'd only know if you tried the service.
2. Is the front page aimed at fans or musicians?
Some sites promise to get your music in front of fans and audiences
if you pay them. However, many of these services don't have the
reach they claim. You should be skeptical about any site that uses
most of their front page real estate to sell you, the musician, on how
they can get your music heard. While sites that directly perform.
services like distribution will naturally talk directly to you the
musician about the benefits of their service, however, a music blog
where the front page claims to be able to get you tons of fans if you
pay them is not likely to be a legit music blog where music listeners
hang out. In fact, the most popular music fan sites usually bury the
link about where to submit music. And they go out of their way to
make sure their listenership doesn't believe they're doing anything
pay-to-play to feature certain musicians' music. If they did, they
wouldn't be able to keep their own audience.
3. Is the service or site where the party's at?
you'll want to go out of your way to judge if the site is where they party is at. Using
a search engine to find out who is talking about it and what
coverage it's getting is a good way to determine if it's a worthy place to use.
4. Are they a good business partner? (What do they charge
relative to other services? What cut do they take? Do they take
your rights/own your song/sound recording?)
Remember there are three parts to every music transaction: the
customer, the middleman, and you. The middleman and how they
treat you matters because their cut, rules, and agreements affect
how much money you can keep after they're paid. All of these could
affect the kind of business you can do with them and you need to
make sure that their user agreements don't take your music rights
forever.
Of course, keeping on top of the new services through friends, other
musicians, and musician-dedicated magazines and sites like Electronic
Musician can help keep you focused on the legitimate ones. However,
these 4 questions don't take long to ask, and can save you a lot of trouble, embarrassment, and money. If you can keep them front of mind,
you can make them an automatic part of evaluating every potential
business partner, or target for your get heard campaign that you run across
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