Hey, I'm brand-spanking new to this. Well, actually, it's been a week or more since I bought the course and started going through it, but my schedule has been insane, so it's a bit tricky fitting it all in, but I'm trying my best to plug away at it.

Anyway, I haven't gotten through the whole thing, so pardon me if any of this is redundant, but I'm wondering if anybody could give me some advice. I'm currently working on my first solo album, and it's going a bit slow, but that's fine - I knew it would. I'm working on a couple of projects from now until march (directing a play and writing and performing music for a different play - just being a professional artist, baby), and so I'm planning the album release in march. Until then I'm recording bits and pieces here and there (I have home recording down to a science by now, so I'm doing most of it myself), and I have a pretty good plan for the album release, on the local front (I'll report on that for you guys when the time comes). And of course I'm going to implement all that great MMM goodness.

I do, however, have an old album that I recorded with an acoustic duet years ago, that hasn't really sold much at all, and I was thinking I could use that to try the system out, and hopefully build my list before my new album comes out. It's not an album that I would be satisfied with today, but it's got a certain charm, and I think people who like what I'm doing today would get a kick out of it.

The problem is, the artist name is different. So I've been scratching my head about how to approach the copy and getting people on a list that's essentially for a different thing. Not that there's a huge difference - I wrote 12 out of 14 songs on that album, and I sing 13 of them. And my partner in that duet certainly doesn't mind. But it's a bit of a branding dilemma, and I'm wondering how to approach it. Any advice?

Also, I'm thinking of what to do as an upsell. I definitely plan on either setting up a membership site or a Patreon campaign at some point in the future (leaning more towards Patreon for simplicity's sake, but we'll see), and I certainly have a ton of old material to put up. I was thinking I'd start writing, recording and posting regular stuff on YouTube (music videos, basically), plus a private Facebook group, exclusive online concerts, demos and things. But there's no way I'll have time for any of that until after these huge projects I'm doing now are done, so I don't think I can do those as an upsell right now. So I thought I might offer a preorder of the upcoming album. That would also force me to set a release date, which would be good for me, because I've been procrastinating on this (because of certain insecurities and stuff) for many, many years. I thought I would make it more enticing by A. offering a discount, and B. offering the preorder customers to have a hand in which songs actually go on the album, because I'm actually recording 15-16 songs, but only putting 10-12 on the finished product (the rest will be online bonus material, to get people who buy physical copies at live shows to sign up for my list, for example). My only concern is this: Is it way too soon to ask people to preorder an album that's not coming out for at least 4 months?

Well, this is a very long question... Hope I haven't rambled on too much.

Love the course, so far. Thanks for all you're doing for independent musicians, John. 

Cheers!