What are you doing from 12 noon - 6 pm on Sunday, May 16?

Perhaps you’re heading to Musicplus — a free seminar to sharpen your skills and network with other musicians and composers. This event takes place in Oakland, CA,  and is being presented by East Bay Community Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, and FMC.

We’ve got some not-entirely bad news: the event is sold out. But you can still tune into the live webcast!

Here’s the skinny:

Today’s musicians and composers are faced with more demands on our time than ever. In addition to composing, recording and performing, we are now busy fundraising, marketing, crunching data, manufacturing CDs, booking performances, shooting videos…and tweeting about all of it to our fan base.

In one sense, this is a time of incredible opportunity. Musicians have more low-cost tools than ever to promote and distribute our work, even on a global scale. But these opportunities also breed questions: how do we participate? What are the most effective strategies, especially for my genre? Which tasks should musicians take on ourselves and where should we employ help?

Sessions will cover:

• emerging technologies to promote and distribute your work
• hybrid business models and the new economy
• arts policy under Obama
• audience development 2.0: effective social networking and data management
• new licensing and revenue generation opportunities
• how to present your work to venues, audiences and funders
• regional funding and arts resources
• the basics of home recording
• touring, visas, and immigration

And don’t forget about our DC Policy Day 2010, which takes place on May 25 at New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. This event is FREE and will also be live webcast. RSVP here. We hope to see you there — in the flesh or virtually!