Internet Marketing and Online Promotion in Music Marketing

NEED ONLINE PROMOTION SERVICES AND STUFF: CHECK IT OR JUST EMAIL ME MATT, kurbpromo@gmail.com

• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• Auckland Posters – Design and Print
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic/Web Design
• DVD copying
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions

I’m writing this post because I’m concerned that musicians aren’t grasping internet marketing.

Have you seen that Gerd Leonhard slide of the horse pulling the car? Always thought that was a great metaphor.

Using the internet to sell CD’s, downloads and T-shirts is not a long term sustainable model for optimum earnings. I’m a businessman, so I will always assess the opportunity to develop proven revenue, but selling physical products such as merch and CD’s is not a proposition that can be extended quickly.

When I launch a new proposition I want to know immediately if it’s going to be a winner. Like within days. Because I’m not going to start selling kurb t-shirts, because if I do, I’m not going to be able to change my mind next week and scrap it.

Things happen fast online. Culture is moving fast.

If you take an internet marketing approach to music promotion and management, you certainly wouldn’t ignore the opportunity to create revenue in traditional ways, but this sort of activity certainly wouldn’t be the core of any modern internet marketers business model.

It’s been almost 18 months since I wrote my first article for the purpose of sharing and leveraging targeted content online.

The title of that article was “your music is worth nothing”. And it described how we were living in a world where copies of music, whether stored on computers or sold as physical product would lose significant financial value over the coming years.

This was a description of how changes taking place in the music industry, mainly due to internet based digital technologies, meant we had to prepare to start shifting the way we approached the business.

That was 18 months ago. Early in the year I wrote about how 2008 was all about 2009, that we had this year to brace for the impact of these changes to be felt.

And what I predict is that all this recession/downturn talk is just going to accelerate things. People have more access to content, information, stimuli through the internet than ever before they are going to be hungry for value and they will continue to demand it.

So real opportunities are going to start to emerge for those who have been preparing for them, not just the token novelty quirky viral video stuff.

But I’m definitely running into a few unexpected problems with the rebranding process here at the music. marketing. management. blog.

A big part of the new flavour here was being unapologetic about building successful strategies, strategies that I know work, which are internet marketing strategies.

I build income for artists and their management online. That’s what I do. I don’t care what you look like or what you sound like, I create strategies to prepare musicians and entrepreneurs to make money in the future.

I still hear a lot of artists who have been struggling and lamenting about the state of the music industry, and I still see a lot of music industry blogs who are not showing much practical support for artists, that’s why I decided to just focus my blog on revenue strategies, and the strategies I use to create revenue are based on solid internet marketing practice.

When I’m talking to artists now I tend to gloss over the myspace and youtube stuff.  Because I say – you can pay me $500 to get your myspace popping and thousands of people to watch your video on youtube but then what? Where are you going to take that?

Yes, but Matt, people come from myspace and youtube and they buy downloads and merch.

Yes, but that’s an old model! Selling T shirts and downloads is only going to take you so far.

If you don;t have decent web property, you’re not building an asset that you can leverage in so many ways it’ll take me the next 6 months to get through it all on this blog.

We haven’t even got into the email management stuff with aweber properly because we got too many artists with ratty websites that don’t do stuff we need them to do!

It comes down to this, if you have no understanding of internet marketing practice you’re going to have a really hard time making your band viable, and it’s going to be a lot of work explaining it to you. You should keep reading this blog, I’ll try as much as I can to keep it simple.

But this is what I’m hearing talking to artists. That they want me to do myspace and youtube. And I’m like sure. What about your website. What about your blog. What about your mailing list. And I’m drawing blanks.

I haven’t even got started! We haven’t even started about leveraging recurring income streams which is a blog post I’m about ready to publish. I’m about to launch into all this heavy internet marketing stuff and building multiple niche web properties because I want to share solid revenue strategies with artists and they don’t even have a clue about the kinds of income that can be leveraged from high quality traffic that you commit to building.

Artists must get business minded about their propositions. Don’t have super premium high value products/services?

Get some! Do the math. You make 10 sales of your CD on your website. You make $100. I make 10 Sales of a 3 month consultancy package. I make $5000. Maths lesson over.

And relying on Myspace is so totally like living at your parents house. Time to face the real world and get out there.

It’s very concerning to me. If I was really committed to artists, it’s most likely I’d have to pull away from how heavily into internet marketing this blog is going so it was easier for musicians with only basic understanding to engage with, but I’m not going to feed you the same industry blog stuff about how to get gigs or get signed to some kind of deal if ultimately it won’t help you, if such things are even still relevant.
It makes me feel that more than ever I need to choose my clients, if you’re not prepared to attempt to understand internet marketing, then you’re not ready for the internet where the mainstream music industry is now increasingly situated. It wouldn’t surprise me if in years to come I go full circle and swap consulting for actually managing and developing acts that I felt were exceptional, by leveraging the brand and financial capital I’m now building up now I’m getting some momentum.

I still feel really committed to the clients I’ve worked with up until now, for all the bands who put faith in me, even though I’m not completely sure where all this going, I’m totally indebted.

But did I mention how everything becomes a lot easier when you’ve got the money to pay for it?

When I was a musician, all I wanted was a bit of coin to keep the wolves from the door. To be able to afford to be able to keep doing what I was doing. And that should be easy for artists who are deliberate in applying internet marketing to their music promotion in 2009.

Standby in the next post I’ll be talking about recurring income streams – different forms of ad revenue and affiliate offers.

Successful Online Music Marketing and Youtube Promotions

Interested in online music marketing, cheap graphic design, or youtube promotions for your band or performing act?

Email me,  Matt – kurbpromo@gmail.com or call me up in New Zealand; +64 27 684 8250

Follow original posts from my blog at Music Marketing Management

Hi  I’m Matt from kurb promotions we provide :

• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• Auckland Posters – Design and Print
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic Design
• DVD copying
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions

Well lets have your youtube account looking halfway decent for a start, it’s not much chop having this wonderful video if it doesn’t look like your serious about presenting it. Youtube is run by google it’s teaming with google juice and Google runs on text! So add text! Lots of it.

You don’t want your youtube completely barren so fix that – start by pulling stuff off your website if you have to.

You want your Myspace looking good. A professional band wants to have a professional looking myspace that looks like they take themselves seriously. Looks like they’re music probably shouldn’t be free, I mean what exactly makes a difference these days?

The you can get started on some promo, with a decent myspace that looks good and makes sense that
should start kicking over. It’s like any space, give people a reason to be there and show them what to do. Get their emails.

Do some tweaks when events take place – when a new video arrives, new downloads, other juicy content bundles that are full of goodies.

Like software and apps. Forgive me this is so a whole other post, but as you see your web designer now, so you will see the guy who designs your custom software and apps in the future.

There’s stuff to do. let me put it this way if I’m promoting some commercial emo or hip hop, I’d be a lot more blunt with my approach, but with grown up music, it needs a slightly more sophisticated approach, so we’ve probably got a lot of stuff to get straight, I hope you can bare with me.

With kids, they’re either into it or not and that’s the end of it.

But where the local scene is mature even by international standards, you have to attempt to grow your
reputation and rapport with the existing context.

Myspace won’t be a problem if your work and presentation is of a standard.

But I do like to be a little bit clearer on my research for youtube, it’s worth making the effort to
really target the audience, there is going to be an interest in new high quality material, and I feel we want to get thwse peoples emails so you can sell them things later on, and leverage it to create more buzz, where there is this established scene to feed off.

Again, this sophisticated market expects free music. Maybe they expect bootlegs and remixes or other interactive 2.0ful experiences.  That’s something we’ve just got to negotiate how we can with.

How you say? I said! Get the emails! Get me a few hundred emails, anyone got a few hundred people on email? Show me those emails then we get to work.

When we get to auto responding those fans down the endless funnel of delightful digital products, we got fan management revenue locked up.

Check me out I’m so fly I don’t even collect emails, but you not fly like me.

So your plan is pushing your traffic where exactly? To itunes? To the video for paid views?

Where’s the high value prospect? That’s why I fly, because of the value of my prospect is high!

You feel me?

Your awesome video you’ve spent too much money on is there to engage so that the target is excited about what they’ve seen.

What do you want them to do after the video? Buy the track? Download free material? Submit email?

They want to sign up for email and they might participate in actions that result in revenue that you will solicit by email and a later time!

This is where I focus on a landing page – which fulfill all these specific outcomes.

We herd them up toward this page where we know should to they happen to have not previewed the video, they can do so, there’s purchase buttons, your social network buttons, your download for the free mixes
you’re offering, plus email sign up.

This is where it goes down.

Otherwise where’s your written content, new release, new video? we need to have that “press release” type
copy prepared as I will be formatting that message for different social media – blogs, forums, groups etc.

Each of these platforms needs to be spammed engaged in the most appropriate manner.

But you need to start, as always with  your keywords, don’t forget based around artists you sound like.

Same with onsite youtube promotion, you don’t want to run around youtube spamming the place, there’s a place for spam , it’s called myspace.

If you’re clever and experienced like me, you use keywords when automating promotion on youtube so you only get highly qualified matches. Otherwise seriously you’re just spamming the place.

Again with your youtube, your copy, you’re going to want to mention artists and labels that you’re distinctly akin to in sound and vibe, and just all the normal press release stuff, if you can do quotes . . . anything I can work with!

So what do we do with our writing? Where do we put it? How do we get it to all the different social media, how will people come to watch our video?

How do we make the landing page with the email and the buttons?

How can we autorespond with deligtful funnels?

Well you can wait around and keep reading or you can get your wallet out and email me, Matt

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Sales First in Music Monetization and Building Online Music Revenue

Interested in online music marketing, cheap graphic design, or youtube promotions for your band or performing act? Or are you interested in building one way back links? I have tonnes of high PR niche sites to swap one way links from, so get in touch:

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Follow original posts from my blog at Music Marketing Management

Hi new visitors, I’m Matt from kurb we provide :

• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• Auckland Posters – Design and Print
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic Design
• DVD copying
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions

I’m so excited I’m heading into the quiet time of the year for me as far as my main dvd duplication and dvd copying operation goes and although I’ll be beavering away on client websites, I’m right back into the internet marketing scene.

Checking out lots of gurus.

Now one guru who I’ve been getting a great deal of knowledge off recently did a series where he pointed out that the beginning of any internet marketing campaign begins with sales.

It doesn’t end with sales, it begins with sales on a website. Sales of a product, a service . . . a fixed fee for some bundled content, any or all of those future music business models we love here on this blog.

This is why I’m doing the work I am with artists, building music and artist sites that are going to work. Because unless you can prove that you have a website and you are selling a product, and that sales are actually happening , there’s no point launching an online music marketing campaign just to have a whole lot of people come to your site and not buy anything.

If anything it should help you understand perhaps people want to buy your products or experience your music in a more interesting and accessible way than a CD.

And understand that we do want to sell things. We do want to leverage propositions, we want to make money online with our music. BUT we can also understand that it’s not easy anymore and just getting those email sign ups means we’re still moving forward towards music monetization.

Sales are hard. But emails are something.

This is the thing, old guruface reckons you don’t even need a product. Once you implement solid online music promotion tactics, you can read the market, and gauge the potential receptivity of a product or service you may only still be developing. It’s clever stuff once you know what you’re doing with a strong email list and traffic flow to your website.

Here’s a bonus Quote from 37 signals on music revenue:

37 signals

“Revenue is like water going into a dam. The more holes you can poke in that dam, the more ways the money has to trickle through to you. Plus, it gives fans more ways to connect with you and interact with you (especially if you’re willing to be open and honest). When that’s true, everyone wins.”