New music industry models: Building a monetized music community

 

So how about the idea of building a website with all your songs, all your videos, all your blogs, all your lyrics, all your photos, just basically heaps of content and charging people $10 a month to hang out there?

You’d only need 200 people and you could probably think about quitting your job. 500 and you’d be looking pretty good. It’s not really hard or expensive to do. On my new paid membership community I’ll be explaining exactly how you can do it, and when you might be ready to do it.

I haven’t talked to much about the monetized music site I’ll be building as an extention of kurb because for the next few months anyway, it’ll be more of a hobby project designed to promote my artists.

I’ve also decided to start developing an advertising network. Because even with pay per click ads like google, you’re still only getting half the money.But lets not get too carried away. by now you should be aware of all the changes we’re preparing for.

Sometime in the next week or so you’ll be able to check out

 

http://newmusicmarketing.com

which is my brand new community. I’m excited about the community because it’s allowing me deliver content and service to more artists and provide more, but in a controlled situation where I’m monetizing directly from the value created there.

How can you use these ideas to create revenue from a community around your muisc and content?

Also before we go on – this blog will be shifting to it’s new home athttp://musicmarketingblog.info

 

As you can see I’m leaning heavily on the keywords – I did a bit of research into determining that “music marketing” is the most heavily searched term in my niche so although it’ll take several months, in the long game, I expect it to pay off.

But this blog post  is more about applying the concept of a monetized community to your own online promotion efforts.Your entry level of maintaining your community is of course building and maintaining your mailing list. In internet marketing they just call it your list.

You’ve got reverbnation, and fanbridge for free musicians options, whereas I’ve downloaded phplist which is the most popular free mailing list application for general use. For a professional solution (once you’re well over 1000 you’ll want to be thinking about this) a lot of big names recommend Aweber.

But this is a fundamental concept behind web 2.0 and online communities – if you’ve got a platform to provide value to a large audience digitally, why wouldn’t you use that platform to create additional value by fostering interaction between those who place value in the content they are receiving?

So the kind of revenue model I’m describing here is based on the need to renegotiate the price of copied music. People just do not see a $1 worth of value in a song, thanks to industry ineptitude people expect to download music for free now. That’s the times we’re living in, and there’s not much we can do about that.

The only way to renegotiate this deal with customers is to attempt to provide a greater level of service and provide relative value! It comes back to economics.You’ve got infinite amounts of your digital products – copies of your content – where is the REAL value?

It’s you. It’s not just what you’ve done, it’s what you’re doing and what you’re going to do. That’s what you can sell. The album survived so long on the idea you pay for a few decent songs and a bunch of “filler”, selling membership to an all access community exchanges as much value as you can possibly give for as much as you can possibly charge for it.

We could talk about what you could charge forever. You could charge a lot and vigourously create value consistently. You could charge a little and promote and market vigourously. You could have different tiers of premium access. You could charge a little bit for a month, more for a year or you could charge $100 or more and say look. You can have full access to everything on this site, download everything I ever release.

You’ve got to innovate around the value you provide to create a proposition.

 

 

 

New Music Marketing for band / artist / music managers

Even though in a lot of ways I’ve been driven by the ideal of totally and completely trimming the fat and providing a digital service that delivers an artists complete business needs, for those of you who have reached the point of needing a manager, surviving without one is completely idealistic.

 

The ideal is of course that when an artist can keep the greater part of the revenue produced from creating something that costs next to nothing to replicate and distribute (ie an mp3) it’s quite sound economically.

 

But the beautiful thing about the new music marketing forum I’m developing is that it actually empowers managers. It empowers all those kids who are managing their friends band to stump up the $40 p/month and learn not only what they ought to do as a manager but exactly how to implement cutting edge online promotion.

 

Why the forum will work for musicians as well as industry people such as managers and others dealing with music related services and products is that although we will provide detailed information and support response in regards to carrying out an effective long term online campaign, we won’t do it for you unless you get really stuck, and that’s the value you can pass out to the artists you handle in a management role.

I can’t believe in this forum I’ll be giving up some of my most valuable secrets such as how I make cd’s and dvd’s so damn cheap.

I run a poster company for people who want to have posters go up for their gigs and such. Why you would waste all that money and paper and ink in such a thing I don’t know. Posters are for bedroom walls and record stores and cafes where they can be treated with respect, not out in the cold street at the mercy of fate!

The next step on from what I’m doing is basically developing a software program that manages and promotes bands.

Imagine a live database of venues in key cities. The artist selects the venue, sends the request to us, and we skype the venue to outline the bands request to perform at the venue. 

 

Okay before we get to idealistic

Just two thoughts on marketing and sales for my competitors and contemporaries providing services and products for professional musicans –

 

Search

 

the sooner you establish the most rudimentary website and blog the sooner you’ll start building search authority there. Google is responsible for about 70% of my prospects. It’s not enough to have bought a domain, you want to get it pointed somewhere asap.

 

Digital products

 

Digital products add value in ways that are scaleable and have a global reach. Although management services, recording studios and practice rooms are not digital products, a blog is, and even if it cant be monetized, you can leverage it for marketing purposes.

 

High growth in digital video will have to wait until we get better broadband in this country.