By Mark Stoddard, author of Marketing Singers, a business and marketing guidebook written specifically for singers.
Singers find themselves in the precarious position of waiting–waiting to see if they get the role, the gig, the opportunity–wondering if they should be doing something else and if that something else will ruin their chances at a greater opportunity.
Even when you get the roles you cherish at the A, B, C and D Houses, the dilemma will stay with you, although you’ll have an agent at that point to help manage your career. But until then, doing something is the better choice because what singers need is performance experience. The more the better.
This blog begins a series that will go into details on how to create a job that will pay you money, develop your fan base, help you create a CD or DVD and performance blog, and provide a base for many more gigs in the future. Doing the first job isn’t that difficult and, once you’ve done one, the work of creating more simply gets easier. Best of all, this is something every singer can do and is always well within your control.
Let’s get started. The performance category idea actually evolved from Jay Meetze of the Opera Company of Brooklyn, at least in my head. I know others were doing this long before Jay and in fact this concept was all the rage during Mozart and Beethoven’s time.
Jay found that the four walls of his theater were rather expensive and confining. So he began, as he told CNN and many other news outlets, to “make opera accessible.” As he points out, at one time opera was the “pop” culture and in some places still is. The key is to make great music accessible. He did that by taking ensembles into people’s homes and entertaining their guests.
About the same time I was consulting with a bunch of singers in the Washington, D.C., area. One singer who sang for the Washington National Opera Company said he needed more income and more performing opportunities. I asked him if it would be beneath his dignity to come to a friend of mine’s home in Chevy Chase and hold a concert for 50 of his friends around Christmas. He lit up like a Christmas tree and thought that a wonderful endeavor. I carefully laid out for him what I’m going to show you in subsequent blogs and he followed the instructions precisely. He reported back that he was delighted that he had all of the work he could want in November and December as well as other holiday times.
We now call those concerts “In-Home Concerts.” Hundreds of singers are catching on to the magic of In-Home Concerts. Some report they make about $400 per concert. Other $700 or more. I’ll show you how I helped four singers raise $30,000 for a young expectant mother who had been hit by a stroke, lost her baby and needed funds for therapy and equipment to walk again. More than 300 people showed up to the family’s friend’s home that backed up on a golf course and dozens more sent in gifts. It’s all possible if you know the steps to take.
Next time I’ll begin giving you the details of how to start, how to get people to host you, how to get them to do most of the work, the program selections and variety that will please you and them, the advertisements to use, the printed program that will help you bring in income painlessly, how to incorporate tastefully selling a CD even if you don’t have one, how to parlay one concert into dozens more, and much more.
Stay tuned.
Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment or email Mark directly at mark@mjstoddard.com.
Mark Stoddard, author of Marketings Singers, is a business leader, professor, marketer and consultant who has been helping singers get jobs for more than 20 years. On the singing front he staged more than 100 professional shows aboard cruise ships that employed classical singers, pianists and strings. He’s also coached singers on how to sell their CDs and other products, use the social media and how to negotiate contracts. Email Mark at mark@mjstoddard.com.
