ProTips For Music Professionals: The Essential Digital Toolkit
A list with a few digital tools that will help any music pro’s in achieving the best results and eventually gain time.
Behind every good artist there was once a tour manager. Nowadays, behind every good artist is a music professional (or an army of music pro’s if your name is Drake), who can pave the way through the digital landscapes that are constantly shaped by social media, DSP’s, music blogs or web radios
You know the music professional quite well: maybe he owns a digital label. Or maybe he runs a music promo agency. Or writes a music blog while managing some cool playlists. His / her work became essential in the music economy dictated by an unstoppable inflation of new music (60k releases per day) and a myriad of promo opportunities and services fighting for the tiny promo budget every artist must invest in each new release.
As the workload can quickly become overwhelming when working for a number of independent artists at the same time, here’s a few digital tools that would help any music pro’s in achieving the best results and eventually gain time. 👇
We tried and tested various tools in time. Price is an important criteria, as well as availability on different platforms and devices. Of course, the list may become subjective here and there, so take the ProTips as nice-to-have features for any service you choose.
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It all starts from the web browser, your gateway to the almighty internet. And Google Chrome does the best job, in terms of customisation level, speed and user experience. Also, there are extensions for anything you can imagine.
ProTip: Chrome has a nice feature called profiles. Each profile has its very own environment: history, password manager, cookies a.s.o. No need to perform the annoying log in / log out operations to check different Soundcloud accounts stats, for example. Just switch between profiles and you’re all logged in.
A small warning: Chrome is a hardware resources hungry beast, so you need a pretty powerful computer for multi-profiles multi-tab sessions.
Then comes the most basic communication tool: the email! We continue our love affair with Google, as you mainly use Gmail. It does what an email client is supposed to do (like sending emails, duh!), but it does this from a clean and intuitive interface, while offering a bunch of tools for the power users.
ProTip: if you go deep into its settings, you can transform Gmail into your own personal assistant. Gmail reminds you about emails you haven’t replied to and about emails you didn’t receive a reply. It can smartly compose emails for you. You can create rules to better organise your emails. Heck, it can even mark emails as important, based on your Gmail history.
All you have to do is write that smart reply. Oh wait, Gmail can suggest replies also, based on context and your previous interactions with the other person. Scary and cool at the same time 😬
We stay with the communication tools but jump in the Meta boat: Whatsapp. The good ol’ whatsapp that tends to give you psychotic episodes when you’re part of tens of groups, all asking for your attention.
So here’s our ProTip: mute the groups and set time intervals to check messages from whatsapp. Star important messages to find them easier in the Starred section. Pin the important conversations, so they’re always reachable on top of your app.
Did someone say time management? Is there such a thing as time management when working with artists? 😅 Guess not, but you can bring a drop of order in this chaos with a to-do app. Meet TickTick, a reminder / to-do app available on all platforms and devices. It gets your tasks organised by projects, smart filters and even hashtags, it allows to create to-do lists within a task… and on top of that you get some nice pastel coloured themes to match your creative spirit while getting things done. The Pro version with all the whistles and bells requires a 4 euro / month subscription.
ProTip: you can transform emails in TickTick tasks by simply forwarding them to a secret email address.
Then comes the next level. Boss Level 50. This could be the child of Microsoft Excel and MySQL. It’s called Airtable and at first sight is like a more coloured Excel. Until you start working with it: customisable reports, collaborative to-do lists, contacts lists filtered to perfection… Airtable adapts to your needs when it comes to organising projects, data and digital assets.
ProTip: use Airtable to create promo plans for your release. Build calendars, add assets, set deadlines. To make your life easier, you can use the promo plan template we built here. It contains simple actions and clear milestones that touch the basic steps of promoting a new release.
Last but not least: the visual side of working in the music industry! Have a cool playlist but your graphic designer overslept the deadline to provide the cover artwork? Need to diversify the way you announce an Out Soon track on social media and don’t have a budget to hire a skilled graphic designer? Then you need Canva: an easy to use app, available on mobile devices as well as in browser, with a massive collection of templates, animations, graphic elements and effects. The learning curve is very steep: you will be able to design visually appealing instagram posts in a matter of minutes. The Pro version will cost you around 15 USD / month, but it’s totally worth it!
ProTip: design a frame template and use it for all your instagram posts to create a seamless experience on the artist’s feed.
Before going back to work, one last piece of a ProTip: stay positive and put a smile on that face. After all, you’re working surrounded with artists and good music.
We even have the right music to do it: the Ultra Good Vibes playlist we update on a weekly basis: soft beats sliding smoothly from mainstream to the undergrounds.