Interview with Musical Artist Tony Chung
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Tony is a music and web entrepreneur who blogs daily about business, tech, and music at Geekwhat.com. He released his debut album in the Asian pop music scene earlier this year, now available on iTunes. He enjoys writing music, creating cool websites, and eating tasty Indian food. |
What were the steps that led up to the release of your first album? With whom did you collaborate?
I parallel the process of creating a debut album and taking it to market with that of any entrepreneurial startup. In our case, the product is an album with quality music. I’d separate the processes into two categories: product creation and product release.
1. Product Creation:
During the songwriting phase, my company approached each song with both a marketing and artistic perspective. Ideally, we wanted to create the perfect mix of innovative songwriting and mainstream elements. After crafting the music for the album, we searched long and hard for suitable partners (i.e. mixing and mastering engineers). Fortunately, we were able to find some very talented and dedicated individuals who helped us achieve our vision.
2. Product Release:
Sacrifice is always a part of the entrepreneurial spirit. I quit my job at Cisco Systems (a tough decision) and took a semester off from college to travel to Taiwan for the album release. There, we partnered with a distribution channel and a publicity team. I went through two months of publicity events to get the buzz out about my album (e.g. TV shows, radio interviews, performances).
In a nutshell, we pursued an arduous but totally rewarding journey of creating and releasing my first album. During the process, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a diverse group of talented individuals ranging from publicists to lyricists.
What is your primary method of spreading the word about your music?
The Internet.
It’s pretty incredible how empowering the internet has become for musicians. With user-friendly software like GarageBand and a free MySpace account, one could easily share his/her music with others (and at a low budget). My primary websites are:
1) Tonelisten (official artist site) - A place to sample all the songs on my album, learn about me, and other cool things.
2) My Chinese blog - A way to keep in touch with my fans on a personal level.
3) MySpace
For all aspiring musicians: I have a philosophy that ANY musician with original works should register a MySpace Music account. Sites like MySpace and Wretch are both ranked in the top 50 visited sites on the internet. Leveraging the immense popularity of these sites will certainly benefit you. What is there to lose?
What are your plans for the future? Where do you see your music taking you over the next five years?
I plan to release my sophomore album after graduating from college later this year. My hope is to continue writing what I believe to be quality music and to reach more audiences with my material. In the next five years, I see myself producing other artists and branching off into other areas of art and entertainment.
Copyright © 2007 by Sonia Aggarwal
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