CRM systems for small studios, musicians, and freelancers, Part 2
Last time in this series, we talked about the basics of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. CRMs are important software tools that allow you to keep administrative clutter out of your head, so you can stay focused on the creative side.
Many of the paid CRMs out there are overly complicated and too expensive for beginners and small freelancers. So, I built my own simpler one that’s free. Here it is, set up as a template in Notion. Modify it as you like to suit your own needs.
Using a CRM tool for songwriting organization
You could also use this type of tool for structuring your songwriting process. Maybe one CRM bucket is labeled “loose song ideas”, another “completed verses”, “completed choruses”, “fun riffs”, etc. Using Notion, you could upload simple Voice Memo notes of musical ideas to a page, then describe and tag that page.
Now, there’s no more having to sift through 300 folders on your hard drive trying to remember where to find that great idea you recorded last week. And, this system would also let you combine different idea snippets in new ways you might not have thought of when you were writing your ideas out individually. You could even make tags for pieces of musical material that limit your idea list by key signature, mood, tempo, etc.
CRMs are very powerful tools, but that power should always be applied with great care. CRM systems can let you manage a higher volume of projects, but doing a higher volume isn’t always the right choice to make.
Disadvantages of CRMs: beware of over-systemization
If you’re an artist who's talking with someone about music production work, and you get the feeling you’re just on some kind of a weird conveyor belt for them, you probably are, and I would run away.
Especially in a creative field, I’d generally advise against attempting to execute an extremely high volume of projects as a regular part of your business. You really don’t want to become some kind of a McDonald’s-style provider, churning the artists you work with through some dumb crappy system that you’ve built out for yourself.
Instead, as a creative provider you want to set up both your processes and your pricing to enable you to do the job right, at the highest quality, with personal attention to detail on every single project every single time. That’s what your clients are coming to you for, after all.
If you’re constantly trying to juggle 15, 20, 30 new projects every single week, the quality of your work will suffer, regardless of how good you might think you are at doing the job.
This type of over-systemization through CRM tools that leads to cookie-cutter end results is a really big problem in the mastering field, specifically. It’s one of the reasons I first got into doing this.
Believe it or not, even at some of the world’s most well-known mastering houses, you might actually be paying for some big shot engineer’s 3rd assistant to do the vast majority of the work on your project, instead of the person that you thought would be doing the work, and who’s credited on the album.
That’s because many of the largest mastering studios have gone way too far, over-systemized, and are prioritizing executing the highest volume of projects over maintaining the quality and personal service of those projects. Pretty lame.
CRM tools and debt in the recording studio space
That’s another reason why I always advise against taking on any financial or technical debt at all to build out your studio. Putting yourself in a position where you just absolutely have to book 20 projects a week to cover a credit card bill is a pretty dangerous place to be. Many studios close for this reason: it’s why you see so many opening, but so few that make it past year five.
CRMs are powerful, useful tools, but that power should always be applied carefully. Any organizational system that you build out should only exist in order to help you do a more personal job at higher quality, not the other way around.
