If you are one of those artists who believe they never should pay for interviews, you should reconsider. When a publication interviews you for free, you answer questions that serve the interests of their target market. You do not control the content. I agree that free publicity and fresh internet real estate are all good things. However, there are many advantages to paying a professional to produce a featured interview or post, because you can control the questions, answers and many aspects of promotion. Get Asked the Right Interview Questions First, decide why you want to be interviewed. There are many reasons why artists want to be interviewed and tell their stories. Do you want to be interviewed because you just released a new song or film or book? Are you going on tour? Are you launching a crowdsourcing campaign? Are you looking for management or to beef up your electronic press kit (EPK)? Answering the why not only influences what questions you want to be asked, but also what order you want the interviewer to ask them. People have short attention spans, so make sure the interviewer asks you the most important questions first. Next, decide who you want to target. How you choose to answer your interview questions can vary widely, depending on your target audience. For example, you may want to provide short answers if you are talking to new fans, but go more in-depth if you are talking to die-hard fans. You may want to use different language and behave more professionally if you are answering questions to for potential managers. Because you know the questions you’ll be asked in advance, you can prepare your answers, rehearse for your interview and give your audience a fabulous performance. Take Charge of Interview Promotion...

Imagine household products sporting your artistic inspirations. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could walk into a department store and see your designs on clothing, towels, table cloths, glasses, dishes and garden flags? Tara Reed, art licensing specialist and Amused Now featured artist, knows just how cool it is! Her licensed artwork can be found on many common household items. You may even have some of her designs in your home. How does she do it? Well, lucky for Amused Now, Tara is willing to share her insights into the art licensing business. Tara explains that art licensing is creating art for commercial purposes that you license through a contract, so manufacturers can put your art on products. To put it simply, “it’s art for stuff that you buy in stores.” If you’re interested in starting a career in art licensing, she suggests you first learn about the business. You should not only look at people who are successful in the industry, like Mary Engelbreit and Thomas Kinkade, but also learn about the day-to-day job. You must be able to work quickly, design collections and wait up to 2 years to get paid. Tara explains about this and more on her website TaraReedDesigns.com and her blog ArtLicensingBlog.com. You should also get a feel for the type of art that works well with licensing. “Art that works for licensing is art that appeals to the masses.” Gallery artists only need to find one person to buy each piece, but licensed art has to be purchased by hundreds and thousands of people. That’s why you see very common themes, like wine art, coffee art, flowers, snowmen, snow flakes and Santa. The art must make people feel good, so they want to buy it. About half the artists in the industry...

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview KeV Atomic, the lead for the band Atomic Honey. Here at Amused Now headquarters, we were super excited, because we’ve been following Atomic Honey for the last year and a half. The band has released a wide range of music, which is why they appeal to a wide audience.  With David Bowie is a major influence, how can they go wrong? Always busy producing new songs, Atomic Honey recently released a new album called “Operation: Moondust” and a new EP called “Just Press Play.” KeV is a big literature fan. He describes “Operation: Moondust” as a mellow journey, where they convey stories through songwriting. After the album released, they made “Just Press Play” for their hard rock fans. We asked KeV how he gets his message out to his fans. Twitter is his social media vehicle of choice. He likes that Twitter allows for open dialog. According to KeV, Twitter is “like a never-ending interview.” He does not like Facebook, because he feels it is not setup well for responding to posts. KeV believes the standards for artists have changed. It’s a lot more than just making music. Fans expect to interact with their favorite artists. KeV uses Twitmusic to post songs for his most dedicated fans. These may be concept songs that never make it into an album. He uses Twitmusic to “let people know where we’re at musically at any given time” and to keep people interested between albums. Atomic Honey has albums on iTunes, Amazon, ReverbNation and CD Baby. KeV doesn’t recommend one site over any other. His idea is to “flood the internet, then roll with as much music as you can.” He sees a lot of artists trying to promote the...