© 2013 by Editura POLIROM

www.polirom.ro

POLIROM

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ISBN ePub rom.: 978‑973‑46‑3671-6

ISBN ePub eng.: 978‑973‑46‑3672-3

ISBN PDF: 978‑973‑46‑3673-0

ISBN print: 978‑973‑46‑3499‑6

Cover: Carmen Parii

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, store in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Contents

About the author

Who is this book for?

Introduction

Chapter 1. First steps

Chapter 2. Inspiration in music

Chapter 3. Ideas for lyrics

Chapter 4. Music videos

Chapter 5. Remixes and mashups

Chapter 6. Covers and sampling

Chapter 7. Concerts

Chapter 8. Online and offline promoting

Chapter 9. Make money

Chapter 10. Be different

Afterword

Glossary

Useful links

„You may say I‘m a dreamer.“

(John Lennon)

About the author

Florin Grozea is a Romanian songwriter and musician, founder of the most successful pop group in Romania: Hi-Q Band.

Just like most successful artists, he was born in a province town. His home town is in Transylvania, no more than a few kilometers from Dracula’s castle.

In highschool, he founded Hi-Q Band together with his best friend. He has been writing songs, performing and speaking in front of millions of people ever since. According to statistics, they have visited over 400 cities and held over 1,000 concerts during all these years, a success that led to many Golden Discs and eight Number One hits.

Right from the beginning of his career, he hosted highly successful TV shows with his bandmates. During outdoor filming at picturesc locations such as the seaside or among the Carpathian mountains, thousands of spectators gathered from across the country to see famous guest stars perform... Many of the successful Romanian artists you know made their debut on the show, where Florin and his bandmates were promoting in-house music in a country that had just discovered modern sounds.

In 2006, he launched a website to promote Romanian artists, a project that won the most important awards of the online industry:

- Originality Award at Internetics 2008

- The Best Audio-Video Website at Webstock Festival 2008

- The Best Online Startup at Digicafe 2009

- The Architect of the Romanian Internet 2009

Florin Grozea has been invited as a speaker at conferences regarding online music and copyrights. he has several blogs dedicated to music and writes articles for online and offline magazines.

In 2012 he began to write inspirational books. This book is the first in a series entitled “100 ideas.”

Contact:

florin@hi-q.ro

www.floringrozea.com

www.facebook.com/100ideasbook

Who is this book for?

• Creative practitioners who want to discover unconventional ways to gain international success

• Professionals involved in building and promoting a brand

• Young music fans passionate about technology who want to find out the secrets behind success stories

• Artists who seek inspiration and methods to promote themselves online and make money on the Internet

All those who understand that we live in a new world, dominated by digital technology, creativity and innovation, will surely enjoy this book.

Introduction

Welcome to Romania, an Eastern European country that most people heard of during the 1976 Olympics and when the dictator Ceauşescu fell from power in 1989. Between these two events, Romania was probably in the news due to Gheorghe Hagi – the Maradona of the Carpathians – and Dracula – the vampire ruler.

And that is about everything.

They hardly ever talked about Romania until 2004, the year of grace when a merry song, whose chorus was something like “Ma Ya Hii, Ma Ya Hoo,” took up Europe, the Americas and Asia. The Romanian band was called O-Zone and managed to become number one in 20 countries and sell over 12 million units! More copies than the American star Justin Timberlake’s album released the same year.

And that’s where what I call “the Romanian bands’ invasion of the world” begins. Between 2004 and 2012 over 120 Romanian artists launched international hits, and this is only the beginning!

What is the secret of the new wave of Romanian music?

What secrets do the Romanian artists hold?

How did a song that cost $400 to produce generate tens of millions for its songwriter? How did a little girl from a province town in Romania become Number One on Germany’s billboard chart? How do Romanian songwriters beat the large American studios with laptop-produced hits?

The most important question is: what can YOU learn from these Romanian artists’ success? You, the ambitious young man with a couple of hundred euros in your pocket, an Internet-connected laptop and a dream.

Let me introduce you to the Romanian artists, the ones who have learnt the secrets of international success!

I personally know all the artists you are going to read about and many of their stories and advice are disclosed for the first time ever in this book.

The road to the top was not easy for them and is not easy for anyone... It wasn’t easy for me either.

I know what it means to be rejected. I was rejected by the big record companies at the beginning as well. I know what it means to be a songwriter and a driver at the same time, a sound engineer and a PR agent, a lyricist and a video editor. I know what it means to have but a few euros and no friend within the music industry.

But I also know what success means. I know how it feels when you write a song that tens of thousands of people then sing together and whose lyrics everyone in your country knows by heart.

Because I have experienced all these things, I decided it was time for me to share the knowledge I gathered in an almost 20-year career! I wrote down ideas and practical advice to help every artist who took their music career in their own hands.

Keep reading to discover 100 free and effective ideas and pieces of practical advice, which can offer immediate results, inspired by true stories of Romanian artists who made it internationally, as well as links to useful resources.

You will need at least one year to put all of these 100 ideas to practice, but now you have all the reasons to be inspired!

Go back to any of the chapters and use my ideas in your own way, changing them, adapting them. If you hit the charts using one of these ideas, that means I have reached my goal! Don’t forget to email me and let me know which idea worked for you and how you implemented it. My e-mail address is: florin@hi-q.ro.

Good luck!

Chapter 1

First steps

In this chapter we will get straight to the subject of the book. You will discover 10 practical pieces of advice to help you at the beginning of the road to success, ideas that will excite and challenge you.

1. Be the first

In all domains, being the first is more important than being the best. The same is true in music, where many top artists are not necessarily the most valuable artists in the music industry which may seem paradoxical at first! But if you follow the way they launched, you will understand. These successful artists understood that they were a brand and that they had to be able to find a good spot on the market.

Competition is high, so it is very difficult for a new artist to have the same chances as already established by successful artists. What is the solution? Find your own place, a new niche, a new music style or an original image.

I know it’s not easy, especially since I’m not only referring to a new music style but I’m also challenging you to find a new clothing style. But not just for the sake of it! You need to find that “something” that makes YOU unique, something that’s already inside YOU and makes you stand out from everyone else.

Before anything else, decide who you are and what you want from your career. Write on a piece of paper your biggest dream, how you see yourself in a few years and what steps you will take, if everything goes the way you want. Try not to compare yourself to other artists (for example: “I will be loved more than Smiley”, “I will dance better than Alex Velea”, “I will be more successful than Inna”) but invent a new way. That’s what all the artists that made it internationally did at the beginning.

2. Be present online

It’s very important for a 21st century artist to be present on the Internet, before starting a career plan! If you don’t have your own website already, go on the Internet now and get a web address with the name of the band. And I mean right now!

Use GoDaddy.com or PowWeb.com for a new domain and hosting on their servers. The investment is minimal but you need your own website NOW!

To start with, write a short text about you and your music on the main page of the website and leave an email address and a phone number for those who want to contact you. Don’t be afraid of spam and unwanted emails, you’d rather get 10 useful emails in 100 received than none at all because people can’t find you.

Facebook and Twitter accounts are very important! There is no artist or band without a consistent presence on these two social networks! Facebook has a reactions monitoring system called Facebook Insights which you can use to see see what cities your fans come from, what ages they are, which articles were the most successful, the number of Likes and their time distribution, etc. Visitors will become fans if your music is good and if you put some effort into attracting them.

Costs: 5-25 euros/year for web domains

Gains: you become visible, you can communicate directly with your fans and monitor their reactions

3. Praise yourself

A music career is not only about your music but also about your skills and knowledge. Update your CV and see what your strengths are outside the musical sphere. Accounting? Foreign languages? Computer graphics? Write all these strengths in capitals on a large sheet of paper and stick it to your bathroom mirror. That way you will start every day being aware of your value.

Be aware of the complexity of your personality every day and get inspired from the other areas that you master.

Costs: 0

Gains: more self-confidence, which will help you in everything you do