micro music promotion for artists

David Hooper from http://musicmarketing.com has a new project, the everyday 15 which I’m in tune with because it’s a practical approach and it addresses the reality for most artists that there’s just not the time or the money for this stuff.

Although my suggestions probably wouldn’t be the same as his, the idea of providing artists with a 15 minute daily schedule i think is quite pragmatic and this is what I’ve been thinking about with my new community – providing artists with the most value for the resources they’ve got.

that’s at http://www.everyday15.com
Also check ou http://musicmarketing.com for his excellent series of music biz top ten lists some of which I have posted here.

 

Today he asked readers to write down 15 promotion strategies and share so seeing as I think about promotion strategies all day it wouldn’t take me 5 minutes to just rattle of the first 15 that jumped into my head 

1. adwords campaign
2. blog commenting, backlinking strategy
3. solicit for remix/cover initiative/competition
4. other interactive strategy to integrate user/fan content into musicians primary content
5. think about your genre. if your a band think about quirky covers. If your a producer think about novelty tracks, remixs and collabs. If your in hip hop research lil wayne!
6. post quality tweets, not just links and spammish stuff
7. approach a local industry person – stroke their ego but ask for nothing but advice.
8. pick a political or social issue to champion on your blog
9. Do what David has done here – actively engage and involve by asking for feedback/contributions
10. If they still don’t want to download the single for free keep digging deeper til you find something they do want
11. review more related music on your blog. review both top international and local acts.
12. Really lay into something that you think really sucks on your blog. (hint: not how you not being famous yet sucks)
13. make it easier to FIND the free download! this ones big! Know one wants a free download that they don’t know about
14. Consider a promotional item you may have access to that is valuable but still so cheap you can afford to give it away. 
15. make opportunities for your fans to see the “real” you. Even if you make one up. Rock stars are so 20th century.

 

oh wow there’s debate going now at http://musicmarketing.com on drugs in music!!!

Getting your head around digital music promotion part 3: not so much “who’s going to direct our video” but “who’s going to write our blog”

 

This is part THREE of a series on basic basics of online promotion

And part 2 is here: Are you ready? Content you need for your digital online promotion campaign
And part 3: Google and the importance of words on the web: more “who’s going to write our blog copy” now then “who’s going to direct our video”
Part 4:  Getting your head around using social media and web 2.0 to promote your music
Part 5: Setting up a music artists website
Part 6: Music Artist Website promotion: Marketing and Sales
Part 7: Music Artist Website Promotion: Engaging, EMail and Monetizing

Just don’t forget my main blog has now shifted to http://musicmarketingmanagement.com

And that the http://newmusicmarketing.com artist community is launching July 2008!

 

Okay Are you ready to start your online promotion campaign?

You’ve got your

- mp3’s of your songs
- jpg of you looking like a musician
- .mov, .mp4 or .avi – a video of you come on, at least saying hi and introducing yourself

 

But I think there’s something missing here Matt! Why yes Matt I think you’re right.

THIS little band doesn’t have a Bio.

 

In fact it doesn’t have ANY copy at all!

 

(“copy” is a marketing type word for um uh words.)

This is why you have a pic of you. A video, and a song of course and you need words.

 

Because people don’t want to know about something that they don’t know about. Pretty simple. If it’s just some site with some weird pic and a bio that’s says “don’t know what to put here but we rock” it’s hardly going to be getting anyone drawn into the mystery and the majesty of the journey into meaning that is your music.

You need copy. You see there was a reason I left copy until part 3.

Because words are well the most important thing on the internet. They always have been and they still are. Because internet, as you probably know, is computers talking to one another through the phone. But this is the thing. Computers read. They can’t see.

Computers cant see how handsome I am in my pictures but they can read every time someone says “Matt Turner is a handsome man” on the internet.

Because all they know are words. And when your computer talks to everyone elses computer and says look at this picture, all the people on the other computers see the picture, but the computer only sees words that tell it to show the picture! It’s true!

 

And so when you ask your computer to find you the coolest picture, it looks for the words that tell it where the coolest picture is. And when you ask your computer who is the coolest online music promoter in New Zealand it will tell you that Mr. Matt is the most special because he writes

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on the computer all bloody day long so it must be him.

That’s the way computers think! And I don’t know if you’ve heard of a little website called www.google.com but as it turns out most people care what computers think.

So yeah. Kinda the whole not so much “who’s going to direct our video”  but “who’s going to write our blog” is the biggest question.

As in, everyday. Yes! Everyday! I’m not joking!

But lets not get to ahead of ourselves. Your bio. There is a lot of information out there about writing bio’s so I’ll just make the one point that needs to be made.

 

Look, I don’t know who you are, I probably don’t care but I might want to know what you sound like, and I don’t mean half the silliest words in the dictionary, I mean like who. Everyone remembers The Who, even computers, you type in The Who into your computer, it’s gonna come up with The proper Who. No one knows who your band is. But maybe if you just put that you sound a bit like The Who, one day, somebody’s going to put “bands that sound a bit like The Who” into their computer and you’re going to have a fan.

Break out the Balloons!

 

Okay before we wrap part 3 which actually turned out to be basically a little mini post about words lets have a plug for kurb.

 

 

Obviously making words is not something I would pay someone else to do, because I’m good at it and I can do a good job myself. So usually with my priority clients I do the same thing I would with my own words – I just have a little peak every month or two and just think to myself how that sounds.

 

How it could sound better.

And also y’know if I REALLY wanted to get them on the email list or at least download one thing so there’s a chance they might remember me again the moment the click off the page I might think . . . hmmm what would be a really sweet way of getting them to put their email in the box or download the song???

 

 

Now that we’ve covered words which got it’s own post because I’m good at words, now we have to talk about the NEXT part in our “getting your head around digital promotion” series – about your website, myspace, and all the other profiles and presence you have to ccreate if you want to do this properly.

Digital Music Promotion Blogasm

 

What’s a blogasm? I dunno but you’re getting a list of bullet points any way

 

 

- My official blog has moved to http://www.musicmarketingblog.info its still a bit of a mess over there but we’ll get there. Let you know as soon as the adsense and all the rest is set up (IE ugly 90’s corporate theme has gone) and we’re ready to unveil. No doubt things could take a while to sort out. I got a dozen client blogs I gotta launch to follow, but we’re climbing the sheer face of the learning curve on wordpress!!!

- I mean go take a look at kiwi musician Tono’s blog at http://www.tono.co.nz for an example of a great little wordpress platform blog. Going to be going over some points soon about what I liked so much about Tono’s blog.

 

 

- Been researching more advanced affiliate stuff. unbelievable. Pages and pages of products and offers. Seriously – am I crazy to think that if a musician can earn 75%  revenue on the sale of a vast variety of products – many of them digital services, tools and information products, why are we still trying to sell our music when people clearly don’t want to pay for it?

So I did a search on “pirates” and sure enough . . . there was a $19 ebook offered by partymoms.com on how to have a pirate themed birthday party. So I’ll put a big fat banner ad up on my pirate sites and each referral that generates a sale of the book I’ll be banking $US15 thank you very much!!!

- had another massive brainwave that must be acted on and blogged about stat. I totally underestimated trademe and am going to be launching a dedicated trademe strategy as both part of my music marketing community and my artist community. You’ll have to wait and see how I play it  lets just say I won’t be expecting a Christmas card from www.amplifier.com

Let’s do the math:

Amplifier.co.nz takes $1.23 including tax and costs on a sale of $2

Trademe takes .50c on a sale of up to about $9 from which point it is 5.9% and you can sort your own issues out with the tax dept.

Of course it is your responsibility to make sure the customer gets the mp3. That’s where Kurb comes in setting up a system that kiwi muso’s can use

- Artists as pussies. I am really worried about artists who are pussies. When I was 20 I left my degree to become a musician despite the fact that writing words was obviously what I was good at. So I was on the benefit living in crusty flats for 5 years being a musician before I even started Kurb. Y’know, I didn’t have kids, I didn’t get too many girls, and I didn’t have a job, all I  did was play crappy gigs to hardly anyone, lost money on every one of about 6 or 7 national tours – despite spending most of my time working on my songs and so if you think a few hundy in my back pocket buys you a career a few months later, don’t even go there. You are not cut out for this.

A Career in music is something you build over YEARS.

Maybe not in the movies, but definitely in real life and particularly on the internet without the multi million dollar marketing muscle of a major label.

 

(PS if you do have a half a million to spend on your promotion campaign I’m sure we can put it to good use! :p)

- Bangalore boys. The Bangalore boys are now an integral part of Kurb strategy. I don’t want to talk too much about it because that’s for the http://newmusicmarketing.com forum and not for every clever dick on teh interwebz.

There’s a whole lot of stuff that soon I wont ever have to do because the Bangalore boys are going to be all over it. And there’s stuff that artists need that I can’t offer at dirt cheap muso prices because I simply don’t have the skills or the time! And web design drives me nutty!!!

That’s why we got Bangalore boys on speed dial. Podcasts, WordPress stuff, Myspace campaigns, web design, all those infuriating or boring jobs are going to Bangalore.

That means more time in the new forum talking to you guys about solid marketing principals, fan interaction, the progressive functionality of technology . . . and answering all your questions . . . and blogging of course!!!

- What else is going to be in the forum? Well the day I start charging for access, probably in August, I’m going to drop a whole lot of stuff in there.

There’s going to be a bare-all on myspace for a start – you are going to get unflinching truth about myspace.  A backlinking bible for those who want to dominate google with some good old fashioned hard graft, plus I’ll also be able to discuss Social Media, Adsense Pay per click advertising and Affiliate marketing  a little more openly.

Not only do you get walk through stuff of each step explained – because honestly you don’t want to have to pay us to administer your earnings until you actually have decent earnings – but you also get told the insider stuff.

_ what about the last part of the “getting your head round online digital headline-stuffed-with-keywords promotion music marketing” series?

okay okay! Can’t you see I’m having a blogasm here!