Internet marketing has become one of the most powerful promotional tools that an artist can use.
While the Internet offers enormous reach on a small budget and holds great opportunity for independent artists it still only accounts for 8% of all album sales. In spite of the amazing marketing, interaction and distribution capabilities of the Internet there is still a place for live gigs and recorded product sales. Nobody has gone from playing gigs in their basement to a streaming video camera, to successfully playing gigs in stadiums without playing hundreds of live gigs in between. It just takes practice doing live shows to be able to pull them off well.
There are heaps of people who want to experience independent music without leaving their bedrooms. A punter could spend years and tens of thousands of dollars touring the world to see independent bands play live or see their video from the comfort of their computer room and the band is ready to play at any time a punter wants to see the video. Everything is available from New York jazz bands to Irish punk bands to singers from Soweto. It is great time to be a music fan with wider taste than mainstream Top 40 pulp.
You are not the only band with a web site. When people go searching for 'modern disco punk', 'Christian Trash Metal' or whatever you do you want to have a chance of coming up in the top 10 of Google. This is the job of the Search Engine Optimisation consultant. You should be able to get a reasonable job of SEO for less than $1,000. Do this first as it effects what you do in all your web spaces. See towards for the order in which you do things.
Make sure not only do you have URL links from your web site to your MySpace and YouTube sites but they are linked by a consistent look an feel.
I can’t give you a formula for internet marketing because almost as soon as it is written it will be out of date. I have been to a number of seminars about marketing music via the Internet and I have found speakers recommending very different strategies. Some of them recommend giving away your music for free on the Internet and making your money out of your live shows. Others focus on getting your songs into the iTunes and other catalogues. There is little agreement on the best way to go. The successful business models are still developing so you are pioneer. Artic Monkeys had 30,000 friends on www.myspace.com that got them a major label record deal but the next band to get 30,000 friends won’t get the same attention. There are some characteristics that are widely agreed to:
Develop a business model that works for you. If you have a good live show are are actively touring you might choose to give away your songs as MP3’s in exchange for an e-mail
address and location then make your money off your touring and merchandise. (This would be a bad plan if your were a
'one hit wonder' like Cindy Lauper and gave away “Girls Just Want to have Fun” for free.)
Prince gave away his last album for free as a CD attached to a newspaper in the
UK.
You might want to video your gigs then sell your songs via iTunes. These “virtual gigs” can be downloaded by people anywhere in the world and you can reach under age people who would never have a chance to see you live in a licensed venue.
First thing set up your own web site based on your band name ie. www.myband.com.au
which you use as your primary marketing tool. Work a couple of the social networking sites but don’t spread yourself too thin.
This way you can meet thousands of people on these sites in a context of who you are musically. There are new sites springing up every day trying to be the next
www.myspace.com or www.youtube.com
. Put a marketing effort into a few of them but don't try to keep up with
social exchanges on 10 different sites. Look for sites that are designed for your
target demographic. Keep in mid that a site that mostly has a user base of musicians is probably not your target market (musicians never have any money and expect to get their music for free.)
If you sound like Barry Manallow then you would be looking to do your marketing effort on sites with lots of women in their 30’s and 40’s. If you do Goth music then Goth social networking sites would be
appropriate to share your angst with sites for 'vampires' etc.
There is a new generation of music fan who may never go to a gig or buy a CD from a "bricks and mortar" store but maintain an intense relationship with you watching your downloaded gigs, listening to your MP3’s, putting your photos in his wallpaper and screensaver, and exchanging e-mail with you. Sell him or her a signed poster, t-shirt, DVD and your best material via an online fulfilment company. You might give away MP3's for free but there will increasing opportunity to sell premium quality product with new high definition music and video formats.
Just because you have been giving away music via MP3 does not mean you have lost the copyright to it. You should only give it away on a condition of personal use only, no right to copy or distribute. You are also quite within your rights to stop giving it away and start selling it.
On your web site you could even sell the guitar you played at your last gig or recording at a considerable premium to what you paid for it. You have added value by using it to perform or record. This could be quite valuable if you start becoming famous. I know a girl who had been selling CD's and songs via iTunes but has made more money selling signed pictures and posters. She is an attractive girl and the photography is excellent. (A good photographer is a real artist; just see the fabulous work of David Lachapelle at http://www.lachapellestudio.com/ Or search 'David Lachapelle' on Google Images.)
For now, most music is still sold from "bricks and mortar" shops. About 80% of music (by cost) is sold in physical form but there is more chart music sold in the physical form.
The challenge to the musician is to find a business model they can make a living out of. With an Internet business model it does not matter where in the world either the musician or the fan lives, it can still be a close relationship. A musician in a town of 2,000 people can do a gig every week (even if the physical audience is the same 20 kids from school), video it, post it on the Internet and you could have 10,000 people see the gig each week. This is vastly more reach than the ‘playing pubs and clubs’ approach of years gone by. You could play to a stadium sized audience from your basement every week.
I think many musicians will be happy with this type of business model:
When people visit your web site you should try to harvest their e-mail address so you can keep in touch with them. If they like your material they may want to know about product releases, gigs, free MP3 give aways etc. You need a mechanism for collecting e-mails, storing them in a database and sending mass e-mails (your ISP will block you if there are too many people in your address field.) There are plenty of companies that offer this kind of service but I have found that http://www.icontact.com/ offers a good service and value for money.
They will provide html code you can embed in your web page to collect the e-mail addresses. They will store the database and provide an SMTP server for sending. There are even templates for designing your marketing e-mails.
Developing a good e-mail list and using it wisely for appropriate communication to your audience is one of the most effective marketing activities you can do.
The order you do these things is important:
I just did a search on Google for “free MP3 music” and got 129,000,000 sites listed. Perhaps I am not the first person who has thought of this? What can you do to stand out from the crowd?
These are just some ideas to get you started. There is no where nearly enough space to write a story on how to do Internet advertising and marketing here so do a search and check out the dozens of sites about Internet marketing. Also: www.fasterlouder.com.au
OK Go, The treadmill guys hired 8 treadmills for 3 days, a hall and the video was choreographed by one of their sisters. The camera was on a tripod and never moved. Not exactly high tech or expensive, just £200. It just required a bit of imagination. They have now passed 48 million views.
Make sure you have control of your own name. When you are thinking of names sit at your computer and check availability in the www.ddns.com.au or www.GoDaddy.com site of every name you think of rather than thinking up a killer name and finding that www.killername.com is already taken. Once you register www.killername.com you own that URL world wide. Legally there are very few other ways of getting world wide ownership of a name.
Have your own web site with your name in it eg: www.myband.com like www.lemontwist.com.au NOT www.smallpond.com/usercommunities/myband
You should have a presence on www.myspace.com and www.youtube.com or similar web sites but use that to direct people back to your www.myband.com web site where the main action is.
I have seen people make some really bad mistakes with their marketing. Don't do the following:
Most people can read HTML e-mail these days so make your e-mail colourful and visually interesting. Get help if you are an audio guy like me who is a bit challenged by the visual aesthetic. Plain text e-mail just looks like it is going to be boring so why read it?
Web designers get too focused on the way they want the whole page laid out and often don't cater for the variety of different browsers, screen resolutions and speed of download. The result is it can look great on the designer's computer but be difficult to navigate on other computers. The most common mistakes are:
Check out Christine Dolce at: http://www.myspace.com/forbidden and www.christinedolce.com I think Lady Gaga may have borrowed some image ideas from her. She gets heaps of traffic 1,500,000 friends and is a very well marketed model. There are some very edgey photos. The web design is quite good too.
Check out this video.
It is a fact of life that 90% of music produced by bands is crap. ("90% of everything is crap" - Andy Warhol.) The "Gatekeepers" are the decision makers in organizations like record companies, radio stations, TV stations etc. who only let the select few through the gate. By watching Video Hits you know that all the videos will be of a certain standard because there are a bunch of very tough "Gatekeepers" ensuring technical and artistic quality. The product put up for viewing will also be filtered for production standards and to match the target market of that organization. Getting played on "Rage" at 3:00am is an easy gate to get through. Getting played on Channel V on Saturday morning is a hard gate to get through. Community radio is easy, commercial radio is hard. Once again: It is a numbers game, and the more people who have a positive experience of your music the more fans you will get until you are famous.
As you progress through your career you will get better and you will work out how to pitch yourself to progressively tougher "gatekeepers". Ask yourself, what advantage does the "Gatekeeper" gain from letting you through his/her gate? Hint - the answer is not 'promoting Australian music or young talent'. What is the gatekeeper looking for? Try sending him or her an e-mail and asking what they are looking for. Always be polite and professional when dealing with gatekeepers, don't piss them off or drive them crazy by calling or e-mailing them too often.
There are Gatekeepers on the Internet as well as the traditional media. Think about sites you go where quality is vetted before you get there.
I value your feedback and peer review. Please send me your comments to: info@digitalharmony.com.au
Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Mark Ellis