Episode 41: Artist Scorecards

Hi everyone and welcome to speaking of the arts. Today’s episode will be different from our usual format of interviewing a key promoter, presenter, agent, artist or manager. I’m going to be talking about something we’ve created internally here called Artist Scorecards. If you go to our website at www.epsteinco.com, you will see a tab at the top appropriately labeled Artist Scorecards, where you can download one and follow along. This is a tool we came up with to help artists think about their thinking, as it relates to 7 core aspects of their career and I thought it would be a good idea to describe how the tool works. So, if you are looking at the card you will see we’ve listed each one of these aspects as a mindset including Touring, Recording, Technology, Fan Management, Management, Business, and Marketing. This is not to say that these are the only mindsets which an artist needs to think about, but rather, what are arguably some of the most important.

This tool is designed to give you, the artist, a baseline measurement of where you are currently at with each one. Here is how to use it. First, enter in the current date in the cell at the top right, followed by your target date. Your target date should be exactly 90 days, or one quarter, from the current date. The reason being, is that 90 days is a very measurable amount of time from which to work with and you can actually take very simple actions within that amount of time to help move you to a higher score. The great thing about this, is that you are able to see your progress over time fairly quickly. Eventually your first target score will becomes your current score once you create a new card for the next 90 days and so on. Simple enough, right?