These days, it is hard to escape the headlines. Coronavirus this, COVID-19 that. People are panicking, dumping their stocks (probably to pay for all the toilet paper) and act like this is the end of the world. Without a doubt, the current crisis is a major global concern, but more than anything, this is an opportunity! An opportunity to embrace online collaboration: It's no secret, Tunedly has been at the forefront of this movement since 2015. I personally have been working on my own music online and remotely since 2007! With many of us currently in isolation, this is the perfect time to try out making music online. Even if not in isolation, we all have to do our part to help contain the virus, which means social distancing. Cramming several musicians into a small, badly ventilated recording studio doesn't really fit the bill.
This pandemic will be over soon enough and things will go back to (the new) normal. We went through several major events in the past 100 years – we made it through every single one of them. The one common theme of every major challenge the world goes through is: Things change afterward, mostly for the better (even if not apparent immediately). I believe the new normal will include much more online collaboration than ever before, so you might want to start embracing it. An opportunity to embrace remote work and employment: Many of you know that we here at Tunedly are a fully remote team. Our staff is spread out all across North America, from Los Angeles to New York, from Miami to Seattle and many small pockets in between. We made that choice to be a fully remotely managed and run company in our early days for one main reason: We wanted to hire the BEST talent. Not just the “best talent within 30 miles.”
Since last week, an ever-increasing number of companies are forced to let their employees work from home. I believe companies will experience the benefits of this arrangement and many more will implement remote work as a standard. For those of you with a “day job,” this means you will save time from not having to commute to work! Valuable time you can put into building your music career. If your average daily round trip commute is one hour, working remotely gives you 261 hours yearly! That's a lot of time to write and record music. An opportunity to invest in alternative vehicles or in one’s self: If you follow the capital markets or maybe even own some stock, the last few weeks were rough. For those of you who are in my age group or younger, the market crash earlier this week was the worst we have experienced in our entire lifetime. This is historical and it shows how volatile the markets can be.
Diversification is key and one asset group many (even musicians) ignore is music royalties. Let's face it, no matter how big the crises, we will still tune into Apple Music (to stream our favorite artists), watch TV (every show/movie/ad has music) or tune into the radio. All of this generates royalties for someone, and there are many more examples! This is an asset class that can be much less volatile and is worth exploring. You sure don't want to have all your eggs in one basket. How do you get in on this? The three main ways are:
1. Creating your own content and placing it in media.
2. Investing in up and coming content creators.
3. Investing in content already generating royalties.
Last but not least, we want to do our part to make the next few weeks/months easier for you and our group of session musicians. That is why we decided to cut our prices for music production services in half - without reducing the payout to our session musicians - until further notice. Our session musicians will lose 100% of their income from live gigs in the foreseeable future, so they rely on remote, session work more than ever to stay afloat. And, for all you songwriters out there, take the Coronavirus Opportunity and try out creating music online with our group of session musicians. Use the extra time you're saving from not having to commute to work and write/record more songs. This phase will pass and so will our 50% discount!
Before I let you go, here are some terms pertaining to the current offer:
1. The discount is limited to a maximum of three projects per client.
2. Tunedly Dollars cannot be used to pay for half-priced productions.
3. The prices you see on our website and at checkout are the full prices without the discount; when we invoice you or charge your credit card, we will automatically halve the regular price.
All the best,
Chris Chris Erhardt is the co-founder & CEO of Tunedly – the site you're on right now. ;) Tunedly connects songwriters and music creators to some of the world’s most talented session musicians, to create professional-sounding music, as well as helping you gain exposure through music publishing opportunities. He is a songwriter and producer, as well as a speaker at music events and tech conferences.
We're grateful to all the photographers who, through their creative genius, have helped Tunedly share our story with the same passion we feel about music. Thank you!
