photo by Daniel Spillere Andrade

We all know that social media is a great promotion tool, but how you use the tool is more important that the tool itself. During the days of Myspace, marketing specialists and musicians alike could easily spend a few hours clicking from one page to another, finding a new person, music act or scenester, say hello and throw over a friend request. For some labels and nearly every indie artist, this was considered marketing.

I consider this a time waster.

In the above scenario you are out looking for people, interrupting their time they spend with their online friends and throwing a dart at a uncontrollable bull’s-eye. I call this a win in Myspace’s favor as you are essentially making them more revenue by serving more page views so more of their advertisers can be shown. In the end you may have a few more people in your friend count, but no more album sales or people at your show on the weekend.

How can you work social networks in your favor?

You need to setup a promotional system to have great conversations with people and on subjects that you can relate to and add to, or interrupt them in a natural way where you and your music fit their mood and attitude. Sounds easy right? Let’s look at a few examples.

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Category: Social Networking | 1 Comment »

Tags: Social Media Marketing, social network advertising, social networking for musicians

The Polyphonic Model aka The Radiohead Model aka the non-traditional-label model is quite possibly the future of the music industry.  Fewer artists are bent on getting signed by major labels and are, instead, opting to do it themselves or find alternative methods, such as signing to labels like Polyphonic. According to a recent article in NYTimes:

“Under the Polyphonic model, bands that receive investments from the firm will operate like start-up companies, recording their own music and choosing outside contractors to handle their publicity, merchandise and touring.”

This model allows artists to actually maintain the rights to their music so that they can continually reap royalties.  The founders of Polyphonic include Brian Message (Radiohead’s manager), Adam Driscoll, and Terry McBride (former manager of the Barenaked Ladies).

“We are all witnessing major labels starting to shed artists that are hitting only 80,000 or 100,000 unit sales,” said Adam Driscoll, another Polyphonic founder and chief executive of the British media company MAMA Group. “Do a quick calculation on those sales, with an artist who can tour in multiple cities, and that is a good business. You can take that as a foundation and build on it.”

Interestingly, some of the major labels are adopting similar practices.  Rather than requiring that all artists sign a “360 deal,” they can now be a little more flexible in how much control they want to allow the labels to have.

In late November, for example, EMI took the unusual step of creating a music services division to provide an array of services — like touring and merchandise support — to musicians who were not signed to the label.

This isn’t to say that labels are going to become entirely obsolete anytime soon.  There are still plenty of artists who feel that the only road to fame is a “360 deal” by a major label.  But more and more artists are beginning to notice alternate doorways opening, which is ultimately going to lead to some major changes in the industry at large.

Category: Business | No Comments »

Tags: Brian Message, DIY artist, getting signed, Polyphonic label, Radiohead model

The goal of the Indie Artist X Project is to develop a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy, prioritization of tactics, easy to use tools, and a reasonable budget that can be implemented by any artist who has the inclination to follow it. About.com Music Careers, Artists House Music, Hypebot, KnowTheMusicBiz.com, MusicianWages.com and Revolution Number 3 have banned together to create this community based music marketing plan. It’s our hope that any hard working, talented musician can utilize this plan to grow their fan base and help lay the foundation for a sustainable career in music. We will be working with one anonymous artist to design and implement this music marketing plan then track and report the actual results over a four month period. To keep up with the latest news on the IAXP follow the project on Twitter and Facebook.

When developing the overall website strategy for the Indie Artist X Project it became clear the artist’s existing website fell well short of the functionality needed, let alone desired.

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Category: Audiolife | 4 Comments »

Tags: Audiolife, IAXP, music marketing, ReverbNation

For the artist that just thinks that getting signed is the answer to be big this is not for you.  You’re the lost generation and you need to wake up.  This article is for the artists that are tired of waiting for others to take notice. For the artists that just want to empower themselves through real work by their own hands and not by others.   How do you make money in this industry?  Simple.  Have great content and build your story.  How do you build a story?

Well first, let’s take a step back and talk about your content aka your music.   Is your music worth talking about?  Will people tell their friends when they hear it?  Many times artists think that they just need to write a few songs and get it out there.  In theory, “yes,” but what you put out represents you.  So, how do you know it’s good?  If you just want to sell music to your mom, sister and cousins I’m sure they will buy it and think it’s “cute” that you’re playing music.   But if you’re looking for a bigger more serious fan base there are great ways to test your new music before you release it: play shows, take a poll and stream the songs online, give some to complete strangers and ask for their opinion.  Whatever methods you use take some pride in your craft.  Be a good musician. Don’t think you’re gonna make money because you have music because if it’s not good go get another job.

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Category: Music 2.0, Social Networking | 1 Comment »

Tags: Audiolife, building a fan base, empowering musicians, marketing your music, outrageous marketing

For close to a decade, Lance Brown has owned and operated One Moment Management–a management company dedicated to building artists through new and aggressive marketing campaigns.  While there, he built artists such as Matchbook Romance (Epitaph), Plain White T’s (Hollywood), Escape The Fate (Epitaph), Millencolin (Epitaph) and Hyper Crush (Universal Motown)  to name a few.  In addition to his marketing and management background, Lance has a deep understanding of sales and distribution and has consulted with various independent record companies helping to break previous sales records.

Category: Authors | No Comments »

“Wait … what? Why would I want to fail!?” If those are your first thoughts, don’t worry. I’m not actually here to tell you how to fail because that’s just crazy. After all, one of the goals of this blog is to help you do the exact opposite. But sometimes, in order to succeed, we need to understand how to fail so that we can avoid making those mistakes. The following, from Taking Your Music Online is “7 Ways to Guarantee the Failure of Your Music Career:”

If you have no ambition to have a music career then you don’t need to read this, you are already achieving what you want. If you are easily offended then I wouldn’t read this either because I’m going to give it to you straight! You see I’m not happy with the whole music business at the moment. Everywhere you look it seems like doom and gloom doesn’t it? We hear daily about people stealing music, how hard it’s become to earn a dollar and how no-one wants to help. It’s all true right? Frankly I don’t know why we all just don’t give up and forget the whole thing.

Well, if we are going to fail, let’s fail properly. Let’s get it done quickly so we can go back to flipping burgers or making buggy whips. Let’s set a goal to fail spectacularly then we can all sit around the pub tonight moaning and knowing we were right all along. The music business is dead anyway, so don’t hold back. Get out there and fail now! Here’s how to ensure that you fail and fail quickly.

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Category: Business | 2 Comments »

Tags: failing in music, Marketing Music, music business, Music Industry, succeeding in music

I really get a kick out of reading about the unique and creative ways artists are promoting and distributing their music these days. There is still a lot of money to be made out there, you just have to be a little creative.  You don’t even have to reinvent the wheel, just learn from others (i.e. Amanda Palmer, Trent Reznor). You can get started by reading “10 Weird Ways to Distribute Music” below from Wired.com, then you can get weird yourselves!

As Microsoft prepares a new streaming music service in the U.K., and a new report indicates a sharp decline in downloads among teenagers in favor of sites like Pandora, what’s an artist to do? Reinvent the distribution business, course.

Industry execs may fret about declining traditional sales, but some enterprising artists and labels have devised new ways to sell music that give fans something to collect, even in an age when the music itself can be infinitely duplicated for free. Or when the cloud makes the very idea of collecting and owning music seem quaint.

It’s a lesson the industry has been learning for about a decade now: If you can’t sell music, sell something else. (Hey, it beats complaining about “kids today” and their utter disrespect for copyright.)

From soup cans to sonic Buddhas, there is life beyond the stream. Here are 10 of our favorites. (Feel free to add your own suggestions below.)

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Category: Marketing, Music 2.0 | 1 Comment »

Tags: Direct to Fan, distributing music, Music 2.0, unique distribution methdods

As much as I love feeding you useful and great information to advance your career, I thought I’d lighten your load with the following hilarious video. I promise you’ll enjoy it. If not, you can leave me hateful comments below!

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tags: funny Friday, literal music videos, Total Eclipse of the Heart

So I am guessing that you guys are here at Audiolife to sell more of your stuff. As musicians, the more “stuff” you can sell (CD’s, downloads, merch, tickets, etc.) the closer you get to doing this music thing full time. And I hope many of you are able to do just that. In order to be the next “insert name of music idol here” there are certain steps you need to take in order to sell more stuff, and today we are going to look at one key factor, the quality of your audio – sounding famous.

Here’s the scenario. You just left the studio and your band is ready to show the world your new tracks. You have been writing and recording for weeks, sweating out guitar solos and snare sounds to get it just right. The bad news is, they aren’t ready yet! You see, when you place your music on store shelves, or online in digital format, you are putting yourself out there with every other artist on the planet.  It’s not just about your musical originality, the audio itself needs to sound up to par to your fans, or (maybe even more importantly) potential fans will pass your songs up and listen to something else. There is so much competition out there with other bands vying for attention of your audience; you need to live up to the hype and deliver a top-notch sound.

Here at SoundOps, we have created a simple checklist for getting your recorded music ready for manufacturing and digital distribution, aka iTunes optimized.
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Category: Music 2.0 | 1 Comment »

Tags: digital distribution, digital mastering, high quality mixes, iTunes optimized, online mastering studio, SoundOps

Last week we touched on your MySpace profile and this week I’m going to talk about your website. Of all the sites and networks that exist online, your website should be the most important destination. It should be kept up to date with news, shows, music, merchandise, video, etc.

Along with your content offering should be a focus on getting fans to sign up on your mailing list, subscribe to your RSS feed, SMS, etc. As with your MySpace friends, the focus should be on quality vs. quantity. You may not start out with a bunch, but take care of the ones that you have.

You don’t need a huge budget to have a website. There are plenty of ways to have a cool website without breaking the bank. I personally like WordPress. There are tons of free plugins that will enable you to data capture, stream audio, video, etc.

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Category: Marketing, Music | No Comments »

Tags: commerce, content, Direct to Fan, Marketing, websites