The Internet is for connecting people with one another and with their interests, however niche they may be. (While some of you may be saying, no Kat, the Internet is for porn, I would have to point out that my suggestion and yours are not mutually exclusive). In my chats with a few musicians and one online music marketer, it became apparent that the Internet offers channels for immediate distribution and connection between you and your fans.
Allow me to introduce my guests. Brian Currin offers online music marketing and represents a number of local musicians, including the reggae rockers 7th Son. He’s also involved in a number of online music ventures – Rhythm Online Music Store and SAmp3.com being just two of them. Galen Hossack is the original founder of Load the Show, a local online music store that runs on advertising sales. He’s also a founding member LPShow, a well established South African surfer rock band. Liam Gibbs is a dance music producer, DJ and record label owner who has played internationally and has a serious interest in online marketing (he was, in fact, Quirk’s first employee).
All three use a number of online tools and communication channels to promote music. They were all adamant that the Internet is the primary place a musician should promote themselves. As Galen pointed out:
“Offline costs time, money and resources, while the Internet largely costs only time. Your distribution can be infinitely wider than offline – more chance of hitting your target market.”
Liam has found Social Media to be his most useful tool, making musicians “easy to find (for live show bookings, which are vital to my revenue), start conversations with your fan base, and actually expand that base”. Given that he describes his audience as “thousands of small pockets of like-minded people spread around the world” traditional media just doesn’t offer him as much potential.
So, what steps should an aspiring musician take to get noticed online? Brian lists some essential spaces you should be in, but focuses above all on the steps that are cost effective and offer the best results for musicians.
MySpace, YouTube and Twitter offer options for uploading images, music and interacting. "You need to represent your band experience online". In terms of setting up a website, platforms like Yola and Wordpress offer free tools that make it easy to establish a presence. Getting involved in social networks is particularly important - Facebook offers useful event organising functionalities for example.
Liam suggests that you focus on the social networks and spaces where your fans are active. You should make comments, upload images, update gig schedules and basically ensure that you keep a constant stream of content going. The point is to make sure you have a presence and content is king. “Make a content schedule if you have to…don’t post all at once and then not for months”.
Tools like Twitter offer a great way to get in touch with fans, and even if they’re not on Twitter, says Brian, embedding your stream on your website provides an incredibly easy to use system for daily updates and sharing gig information.
Brian also mentioned FanBridge, an email marketing platform that provides you with free functionality for up to 400 subscribers. You can keep fans up-to-date with news and info directly to their inboxes. This naturally requires that you start building a database of fans to email – no spamming people!
There are a number of other sites that focus specifically on music distribution. Liam listed ReverbNation and SoundCloud, a site that applies cloud computing to the music space and has “merged social media concepts with a suite of file sharing tools, aimed at music producers and record labels”.
While all these networking and online tools prove imminently useful, it’s undoubtedly file sharing that creates the greatest opportunity for musicians. While Liam pointed out that online distribution removes the costs involved in producing a CD, he did acknowledge that illegal file sharing has hurt musicians and record labels. It seems that, for him, the benefits outweigh the costs.
“I make almost all of my revenue from gigging and I don’t believe I could have played at so many venues around the world if so many people had not pirated my music, quite honestly.”
Galen echoes this sentiment, saying that you can’t stop it, so you may as well work with it. He also believes that “A lot of band revenue will be made out of live shows going forward”.
Giving your music away for free is one of the most powerful marketing tactics available to a musician according to Brian. "Radio stations used to provide exposure to new music, but it's the Internet that is increasingly doing that now". Getting people to listen to your music is, after all, your first hurdle.
So where does this put record labels? Brian believes major labels will be investing their time in business to business enterprises. Ventures like selling a song to be used in a new Play Station game bring in huge revenue, as do movie soundtracks and sponsorship deals. “Labels are going to have to foster and create these opportunities”. Galen, on the other hand, believes that record labels will still play a role. He believes the increasing specialisation of online tactics coupled with the event organisation required for major bands is enough to secure them a place in the industry.
“You’ll still get the real great bands coming from the underground websites who sing about how terrible their life is and after a while they’ll sell out, change their music to some sleek commercial rubbish to make money and move to the big commercial sites. Then they’ll take too many drugs, have too many babies and complain about how terrible their life is. I love it!”
Well there you have it.
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Great article - very interesting.
I can't understand why nobody in SA is really embracing blogs to promote and distribute their music.
I understand that creates problems in terms of generating revenue, but I feel that the SA music market could be lagging behind the rest of the world by not doing it.
Thanks for the links to those sites - have checked them out and find it interesting to see some of the ways that the music scene is being promoted - hopefully there'll be more in future.
Posted by Primate on 2009/07/29