How to Use This Guide [PLEASE READ]:

Howdy, I'm Lex Land, a songwriter and jazz vocalist residing and working in Austin since 2009.

As I'll detail a bit more throughout this mini-course, I started experimenting with Livestreaming to help support my music income at the beginning of 2018.

After doing this for a few years now, and being nerdy about it all the while, I can share not only some helpful tips that might make your streams more successful, but also some insight about why using this strategy properly might help your music business in countless ways moving forward.

I am not a certified marketing expert, and no, I haven't tried literally every combination of tech and platform and time window, but based on what I've seen and tried, I'd like to offer my insights in the hope that you may find them valuable.

Much of this course will focus on the WHY of this strategy, and how it directly pertains to you in your musical journey, and to ask you some serious questions about where you want to fit into the big picture of what's happening in the current climate, particularly, with live streaming.

There are a lot of "talking head" videos throughout this course with me explaining my opinions, tips, and insights. Some videos will be screen recordings to help you navigate certain things.

I urge you to go through the course in order, because careful consideration of the ideas upfront will help dictate your decisions moving forward when it comes to more of the little details like tech and deciding between platforms.

The text in each lesson, if any, will not be a transcription of each video, so I would advise at least a glance at the text. Sometimes the text might be a little clearer than the video monologue, but the audio might provide more nuance and detail, so best practice may be to review both. However, if my voice or face are just too annoying for you, you can probably get the important details of whatever I'm discussing by reading through the text.

One last note...

Please be kind! I have never put together a course before, and I tried to throw this together quickly with a "done-is-better-than-perfect" attitude to get this information into your hands as soon as possible. Hopefully, with time, and as the landscape of us all doing this changes, I can upgrade it and reiterate it into something more professional and valuable for future streamers if there is the demand for it.

I'm sure some of you will disagree with some of my opinions, and that's ok. I'm not here to fight or preach; I genuinely want to get folks thinking about the bigger picture regarding this and consider the possible results and repercussions of what we're doing as a music community while things are dire.

Mostly, I'd like to remind us all that we need to focus on providing value for our audiences right now, as that is paramount.

The nonprofit organization Austin Texas Musicians has kindly sponsored the hosting of this course, so that, per my intention and wishes, this content will easily be available for free to anyone who wants it.

I hope you get some value out of this. If you do and are in a position to support me personally for what I've done here, you can use my tipping feature at lexlandmusic.com/love or via paypal.me/lexland - as you know, every little cent helps.

I am a full-time independent musician and have no other source of income outside of my music income. My fiancé is also a musician and works in production, so no longer has his day-job, either. We're all facing some scary stuff right now, and I wanted to say, lastly, that I'm with you.

Stay tough out there, and I hope this material can help even a little bit.

Lex

This course is sponsored by Austin Texas Musicians (501c4) - a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to being the trusted voice of Austin’s musicians.

For more information on how to become a member please visit atxmusicians.org or follow @atxmusicians on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.