Wendy King - Five Ways a Budding Guitarist Can Get Noticed

Jeeni Blog

Helping the next generation of talent to build a global fanbase

Wendy King - Five Ways a Budding Guitarist Can Get Noticed

The music industry is on a roll. A report by the World Economic Forum highlights how global music revenues have risen by 20% since 2021, largely due to a surge in streaming which accounts for 65% of the industry's revenues. Over the previous year, streaming revenues rose by 24.3% and reached £14.1 billion, showcasing the impact of digitalisation.

Despite the significant growth of the music industry, the sector remains notoriously difficult to enter. Our previous post on "The Hardships of Getting a Job in the Music Industry" visits how it can be tricky to get noticed in the music industry, especially with its unfair demand for work experience. While internship and work placement can be a great way to gain valuable experience, it's essential that young talent makes an effort to get recognised and recruited for these opportunities. In this article, we visit how budding musicians— specifically guitarists— can get noticed.

Establish an online presence

We all know that streaming and digitalisation have become a key part of the music industry— making it a great opportunity for budding guitarists to perform and showcase their talent. There are many ways to establish an online process, primarily through social media. To ease some self-marketing processes, consider signing up for a service connecting you and a global audience. Our platform Jeeni is a multi-channel service that allows artists and performers to showcase their talent, keep 100% of earnings, and have full creative rights. Through online opportunities, you can expand your reach and visibility as a guitarist.

Add in guitar effects

While you don't need special gear to get started, investing in a guitar rig and effects allows you to not only practice with equipment important in your career later on but enables you to change up your songs and how you present them. Many guitarists rely on Electro-Harmonix analogue delays, which have helped produce modern music's most sought-after and oft-imitated sounds. The Electro-Harmonix Memory Toy is suitable for those just developing their rig, as it's a simple board with three knobs but still provides clean tones. This device allows you to add subtle delay effects that still elevate your tunes.

Try busking or street performing

Many famous guitarists like Glen Hansard and Passenger (Michael Rosenberg) started as buskers before making it big. If you want to try your hand at busking, having an amp is necessary to get your tunes heard by people. Roland amps are well-known for their portable PA systems, making them convenient for playing on the go. The Roland Cube Street II is suited for street performances as it's battery-powered, as well as having an angled back for floor placement. This amp enables electric and acoustic players to amplify their music, allowing you to build confidence and showcase your talent to the public.

Collaborate with other indie musicians

For those looking to reach more music fans, it's essential to collaborate with other musicians. However, it's important to be mindful of their music style— you're more likely to retain an audience if your music aligns with theirs. If you've followed our earlier tips and already established yourself to a small audience, you can bring bigger value to others, opening the opportunity to work with more prominent artists. Check out the Jeeni channels to spot potential collaborators.

Keep making and performing music

Although it may seem straightforward to keep making and performing music, many tend to ignore the need to simply put yourself out there to help you get noticed by someone who likes your approach. Aside from exposure, being able to perform constantly can help you practice and identify areas of improvement— allowing you to master your talent fully.

There are plenty of opportunities to learn and expand your reach as a guitarist. For more guitar-related insights and songs, make sure to visit our Guitar channel to inspire your work.

Written by Wendy King for jeeni.com

BACK

24
Feb

Jada Freeman, ‘Vibe With Me’ - Single Review

Last year’s 'Vibe With Me’ is a seductive, inviting and playful single from Jada Freeman. The track has hugely diversified her style and expanded expectations for her work ever since. Brand new to Jeeni, Jada Freeman is an exhilarating producer, singer and songwriter from East London. Although she thrives in the world of RnB, Jada casts a wide net of styles and approaches to her music that will catch you off-guard in the best possible ways. Jada has contributed all of her singles so far to Jeeni, including her successful track, ‘Illusions’ which has nearly 10,000 listens and is only available on Jeeni and Soundcloud. Check out her Jeeni showcase to listen to all of her music: https://jeeni.com/showcase/adkcmyfeevyu/ The first thing ‘Vibe With Me’ plays you is a creeping, mischievous bass line that darts around the beat and contains a lot of personality for a bass part. Underneath the bass is a warbling synth which acts as a sort of bed of sound and comfort. The flickering low-pass filter on the synth gives the entire track a relaxing, under-water tone which entices the listener in, hence the apt title. The beat is so fitting for this tranquil, yet alluring track. Alternative, new-age percussion is used to provide the beat instead of just kicks, snares and hi-hats. This choice makes the track entirely more interesting and stylistically layered than many other artists in this corner of contemporary music. The more obviously captivating component of this single is Jada’s vocal talent. Occasionally conversational like her named influence, Lilly Allen and other times soulful and staggering, Jada’s voice is a powerful tool in carrying her creative intentions and in ‘Vibe With Me’, that weapon is in full force. Jada also makes an experimental use of her voice as backing vocals that echo the welcoming title. Pitch-shifted both up and down at the same time and synthesised, Jada makes her voice into an entirely different type of instrument to emphasise the title and sentiment of the track throughout; a genius production device from the upcoming artist. Check out this brilliant track on Jeeni here: https://jeeni.com/vibe-with-me-jada-freeman/ How can Jeeni support artists like Jada Freeman? JEENI is a multi-channel platform for original entertainment on demand. We’re a direct service between creatives and the global audience. Album Review album review album review • We give creatives, independent artists and performers a showcase for their talent and services. And they keep 100% of everything they make. • We empower our audience and reward them every step of the way. • We promise to treat our members ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect. • Access to artist liaison and a supportive marketing team.

03
Sep

Jeeni reaches £100K funding target in 6 days

Day 6: Jeeni announces they have reached their funding target in 6 days and now aim to overfund. If you want to see our pitch click HERE. Jeeni, the social music platform that brings artists closer to their fans and shares revenue ethically, has successfully raised over £340K on Crowdcube across three rounds. With 350million streamed music subscribers and market growth up by 39% this year, Jeeni is likely to ride the wave and be a huge success, not only with unsigned musicians and performers but with their superfans. “We set a target to raise £100,000 for 2.4% with a pre-market valuation of £4M,” says Jeeni founder Shena Mitchell. “And while we have the support of several major investors, the beauty of Crowdcube is that artists themselves can actually own a stake in the company for as little as £10.” Shena continues, “Jeeni’s mission is to support unsigned music and performers, by helping them build a fanbase. We aim to fast-track careers in the music business, and make sure they take the lion’s share of the revenue that’s raised. Jeeni is needed more than ever in this Covid-19 New Normal, and we have proved that the demand is high. Currently we can only support 100,000 videos, so we must now move up a gear as we head for global roll-out. This Round Three investment will be used to scale up again and launch our next-generation platform. It will also be used to develop our iOS and Android apps. With the financial backing secured, we’ll be creating new jobs in the area, which is great for the local economy. When you consider the wealth of music talent in Portsmouth – hosting over 2,000 music events a year with Victorious, The Guildhall, Band Stand, Wedgewood Rooms, and all the Portsmouth Festivities and pubs – we’re alive to the opportunities of our local music culture, creativity and talent. But with live venues locked down for now, the online opportunity of Jeeni is greatly increased. It’s so cool to think someone reading this might choose to invest in Jeeni now with just £10, and then use Jeeni to build their own fanbase for fame and success! We’re going to try hard to make sure that happens.” JEENI is currently inviting investment on Crowdcube. To find out how to get involved please join our mailing list for updates or check out our fundraising pitch. If you want to see our pitch click HERE.

04
Jun

A $0.003 reward?! We’re Twitching at the thought!

Twitch has always been popular amongst the gaming community. It was created initially in 2011 as a platform for gamers to use in order to live stream as well as broadcast live Esports events and competitions and has since retained on average 15million daily users. With so much more of our time spent online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Twitch has expanded in regard to what they broadcast and live stream: talk shows are growing in popularity as well as live streamed music to name but a couple. As the date for the resumption of normality approaches and with it the reopening of concert halls and live shows, one can speculate as to what will happen to those artists that have decided to make use of these live streaming platforms as a source of income. Twitch users reportedly spend three times as much time on the platform as on Sportify and YouTube so the potential for it to be a very lucrative platform for music makers and artists is what has been looked into by Will Page, an economist who runs Tarzan Economics. He worked alongside various teams in order to understand how live streaming and live music may co-exist in the future. “Live streaming won’t go away when live music returns.” -Will Page In 2002, one of the first music streaming services Rhapsody, offered a $9.99 monthly price which is the same as what we see today for similar music streaming services. What is provided is also pretty much the same as what was offered in 2002; fans remain largely disconnected from their favourite artists, they are unable to offer direct compensation to creators, and ‘cross-usage’ occurs frequently as a listener is often subscribed to multiple platforms. “None of the on-demand streaming services that have since sprung up enable immediate engagement, this is a relic of the music industry of old.” -Will Page User engagement is something that both Twitch and Jeeni offer, and not only does it allow the fans to be more involved with the artists they love, but it allows the artists to be fairly compensated, a huge issue which is now being petitioned against by the Broken Record Campaign. See our last blog post for more information and ways that you can support the campaign. According to Will Page, the typical music streaming model has approached the way in which artist are compensated in one way: “the platform aggregates all the streaming data and revenues from a specific market and product over a specific time period, divides an artist’s share by that sum, and allocates revenues proportionately. Get 1% of all the streams, and you’ll get 1% of all the money. This has spurred much debate within the industry, as heavy streamers are effectively subsidised by light streamers, or as Quartz controversially put it: Your Spotify and Apple Music subscriptions pay artists you never listen to.” In essence, the modelling simply just isn’t fair, and neither rewards the artists or their fans for supporting them. The way in which Twitch brings in money, however, varies across three methods similar to Jeeni: Creator Channel Subscriptions, Bits allow users to support creators directly on the service, and advertising. Will Page made a comparison between creator earnings on Twitch, which average at $0.15 per-hour-per-user, with that of global streaming services at which the rate per-stream is set at roughly $0.003. By taking the $0.003 per stream and multiplying by 17 (assuming a song lasts 3 minutes this equates to an hour of listening time), then applying an average 20% royalty rate, this results in a creator’s “revenue-per-hour listened” at just $0.01. My jaw dropped, did yours? Twitch has proved it can monetise over 10 times better than music streaming, however this only applies to creators’ most loyal fans that tune in on a regular basis. "If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year." -Kevin Kelly, The Technium, 2008 Do you want to spend hours watching your favourite gamer and at the same time, fairly compensate and reward them for their time and effort? Well of course. What Twitch does for gamers, we want to do for music makers and artists here at Jeeni. Look out Twitch, we’ll meet you at the finish line.

Jeeni Blog