Any paid-up superfan has gone on a journey from supporting an artist that no one’s ever heard of to seeing them flourish into the success they knew they always would be. Since it’s essential that artists build a relationship with their potential superfans, most of them stick to social media. But email is actually just as powerful a tool. Here, Guestblogger and musician Mirjam Sieben offers up some email marketing tips and reveals what something as simple as an email can do for your music.

More musicians suffer from stage fright than you might think. In this blog, we interview two professionals to find out where the fear comes from and how you can overcome it.

While you’re busy mastering any musical instrument, inevitably, a relationship is also busy developing between your instrument and your body. For any musician, the art lies in moving the body as efficiently as possible to guard off any possible aches, pains and even injuries. The Alexander Technique (AT for short) has already helped countless musicians, and here, we lay out the basics so you can start playing better and playing healthy.

Most guitarists want to up their game by playing faster. The secret? The right approach and plenty of practice. Forget ‘talent’ and experiment with these seven tips and train yourself to speed up your playing.

BB King, Janis Joplin, Rod Stewart, Tracy Chapman, Beck and Ed Sheeran all started their careers as busking street musicians. Guestblogger Marlies shares her top 10 list of street musicians from around the world. These musicians have just as much talent as the big names mentioned above, so expect to hear more from them soon!

At some point, it’s going to happen to every band: great gig, shabby sound. While sometimes it’s the venue or local sound tech that’s to blame, the band also has a hand in how they sound. Every band’s stage sound partly determines their success, so whether you’re playing a small café or a big venue, you’ll want to make sure that you come prepared.

Partly thanks to televised talent show competitions, there are more vocalists than ever. Some opt to join a choir, while others sing solo. And then there are pop and jazz lovers who sing a-cappella as part of a vocal group. Want to know what it takes to sing in a vocal group? Simply read on.

In his previous guest-blog, radio DJ Sander de Heer explained how you can get into podcasting. If you’ve come up with a plan in the meantime, then you’re ready for the next step: getting more people to listen to your podcast. Sander points out a number of important things you need to pay attention to.

Want to start a podcast but don’t think you have the right voice for it? Don’t worry, the trick is actually not to engage in deejay-speak, talk very loud or constantly spout esoteric lingo. Using your normal voice and speaking as if you’re talking to a friend is always the best approach. Guest-blogger and radio DJ Sander de Heer is here to talk shop again.

Mixing any audio puts both sides of your brain to work, with the technical side of things calling on the left brain and the creative stuff calling on the right brain. When you’re having to constantly switch between the two, it can slow things down. So, when inspiration strikes, and you can already hear what you want the track to sound like and you’re itching to get started, it can be a bit of a buzzkill to have to make sends and seek out plugins before you can actually get stuck in.

Looking for a way to get that pure, modern pop sound on your vocals? Guestblogger and home studio coach, Ben van Essen shares three tips to help you gain radio-ready sound.

While you can’t actually ‘see’ a voice-over, it’s the element that conveys the message. Some voice-overs are so well expressed, that you not only hear what’s being said, but see images, feel things, smell things and even taste things. But how can a voice artist pull this off? A little empathy and some acting talent can go a long way, of course, but it’s just as important to know what you’re doing and really know the material you’re working with so that, when you speak, you’re speaking consciously. In this article, Myra Grünning explains how to make your voice-overs more expressive. Myra is a qualified speech therapist and speech coach and also works as a voice-over artist herself.