Serious Online Music Marketing and Artist Management Strategin in 2009

Matt from Kurb Does:

Online Music Marketing

WHAT YOU GET FOR US$500

BASIC BLOG or WEBSITE DESIGN + SET UP worth $147

PROFESSIONAL EMAIL MANAGEMENT worth $60

FREE ONLINE ADVERTISING CREDITS worth $100
+ CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT worth $100

MYSPACE / YOUTUBE PROMOTION worth $297
10,000 actions + 10,000 views guaranteed

BLOG PROMOTION AND SEO worth $97

GIG PROMOTION / GRAPHIC DESIGN /
PRESS RELEASES + COPYWRITNG
worth $147

EMAIL: KURBPROMO@GMAIL.COM // PHONE +64 27 6848250

MATT FROM KURB ALSO DOES

Small Business Marketing

Youtube Promotion

DVD Duplication

Cheap Graphic Design

Blog Promotion

EMAIL: KURBPROMO@GMAIL.COM // PHONE +64 27 6848250

This is an example of a proposal I’m doing for a clued up client I spoke with on the phone, I don’t have to dress it up with this guy, he knows we’re not moving forward in any other direction than digitally in the music business, and that’s what we have to deal with.

So this guys not dumb, he’s already working with acts that are getting traction, getting actual sales, I just need to be absolutely clear about what I can do so he knows exactly what to expect and that way we should be able to do good work and make good money in music business.

So really, it’s not much of a proposal. It’s just telling the guy straight what it is I can do and if he wants in then I’ll put a number on it . . .

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Some notes on exactly what it is I do:

I’m used to usually being a musicians only source of music business guidance but when I’m dealing with a new client I tell them that I provide strictly online marketing and management based mainly on internet marketing practice, I don’t pass judgement on musical skill, I don’t assist with recordings and I don’t really do publicity – my experience is in direct to fan marketing and monetization online, not influencing media.

My first priority is to establish platforms from which to interact with fans. Just showing stuff isn’t enough if you’re not attempting to engage more significantly.

Your basic level is myspace, then graduating to a landing page page to collect emails examples are:

http://www.gangamusic.info/ganga-landing.htm

http://www.purepathmusic.info/

Then I set up and promote artist blogs, my designer does customized blogs, and help artists with copywriting, and basically leveraging content so that we can write a blog post, then rewrite it as a newsletter for our email list, and then also rewrite it as an online article for syndication by ezines or even an online press release. Each time this process is done we build links and content online building up the overall online visibility as well as Google ranking.

I have several other Google ranking tricks I also use, but google ranking is a long and continuous process that requires regular fresh written content.

With Myspace and Youtube I do use software but it just doesn’t usually convert into anything meaningful. I’m sure if it was done right in the ways I’ve been describing, as part of your network in which you’re producing and distributing regular free content – articles, podcasts, videos etc. another reason I still promote on youtube and myspace is I think it actually gives the artists a boost when they see that people have actually been watching their video or checking out and joining their myspace.

But then they learn just because people watch a video or add you on myspace doesn’t mean they’re going to spend their money.

I think it can be done right, it’s just questionable whether it’s truly worth it.

As well as google search optimisation I also perform google and facebook pay per click campaigns and this I believe is a reliable and measurable form of marketing that can be used effectively n different ways for example, to promote events as well as online brands and products. I seem to have a good knack for this is stuff, and also I do a lot of work sourcing free advertising, this is the basic gist of my Facebook promotions, I run facebook advertising campaigns for artists, but I seldom pay for them.

This guarantees artists a certain amount of traction.

But some point, artists have to step up from the basic level of providing a platform with basic interactive elements – website, free downloads, videos, email lists, myspace, facebook, google ads etc. to actually basing their promotions around a traditional “promotions campaign”where an artist is pushing forward a unique proposition in order to get fans more highly engaged.

There are infinite innovative ideas for what kind of propositions or hooks could motivate fans and leverage attention for greater exposure and brand building but the obvious ones are competitions, giveaways, or projects such as remix projects that motivate fans and other creative people to interact with artist content and expose that to their own networks.

Sometimes this may involve a traditional album launch campaign, but it is not always necessary to be promoting a product if you’re building the act’s brand equity, and especially, building value in the brand first means you can focus on giving value to the fans and building up the trust of the fanbase , before monetizing that relationship through sponsorship.

It’s at this point that the creative side of what I do in artist promotion comes together with the technical execution of rolling out that campaign.

It’s often why I do 3 month stints with artists because it will take 3-6 months to establish a platform fully, and then each 3 month cycle represents a new campaign cycle with a new proposition or promotion angle.

When a new campaign comes together, my designers prepare the necessary web banners, buttons and panels, we execute on myspace, we distribute specific video content and drive traffic to and through youtube, we have ad campaigns running on facebook and google that can be distinctly customised and analyzed by performance. We have our email list built up so that a compelling and persuasively written newsletter can go out incorporating interactive and/or ecommerce options, that can then be re-purposed as a blog post, then as article for syndication, and finally as a press release. On top of that we can prepare supplementary written content and repeat these steps to get the best result.

The final thing I assist artists with is alternative revenue. That probably needs a whole other email but this includes:

affiliate marketing. If affiliate marketing will pay $30 commission on a $40 entertainment product, why should the act, as the affiliate, not offer their album as a free incentive for anyone who purchases the album through their link?

• - that’s only one form of affiliate marketing, most often their needs to be some research into what, of the many thousands of affiliate products available, is an appropriate fit with the artist.

  I often use this site as an example:

  This is a free service that pays US$1.50 per free sign up, so if you have 1000 fans on your email list and you ask them to sign up for this service and 500 do it to help the act, that’s US$750, and of course imagine if you had 10,000 fans on your mailing list.

Advertising is also an area I’m experienced in, but at the moment, I think that using advertising on an up and coming bands dite dilutes the brand, your much better off looking at direct sponsorship deals.

As I say, most of my clients have no other form of music business guidance, so there is a lot more than what I’ve described that I actually do, I’ve just outlined the most significant points above, these are the areas where I’m getting results.

When an artist comes on board with me I ask for $US500 for a 3 month period.

This based on a concept of my team, that is myself, my graphic designer/web designer/web admin guy, my copywriter/content manager and my traffic person (myspace/youtube etc.) each contributing what averages out to an hour per week for 12 weeks.

12 hours from me

24-36 hours from my staff

cost inclusive services:

additional hosting + domain names where needed

email management (US$20 p/month)

Free online advertising credits

In consideration of the artist goals and we’re they’re positioned, we still tend to follow the above structure more or less, depending on the artists support, it will usually take 3-6 months or 1-2 campaigns to establish the artists platform completely and then focus on building fan relationships and viral promotions.

Online Artist Management and Internet Music Marketing Blog Update

Matt from Kurb Does:

Online Music Marketing

Small Business Marketing

Youtube Promotion

DVD Duplication

Cheap Graphic Design

Blog Promotion

EMAIL: KURBPROMO@GMAIL.COM // PHONE +64 27 6848250
You got to keep your blog updated.

I say it enough times! That’s why even if you’re busy and have other stuff going on like myself, you must make the time to pop in and update your blog because the mere regularity, frequency and recency of your posts are going to determine the traffic you’re getting.

I must admit I was having my doubts about music promotion there for a bit because the industry is taking a hammering and as I’ve said a lot of artists plain don’t get whats happening around them even though we’re actually well into the curve of these changes taking place in music and digital entertainment.

But then I get approached by these artists who I can see immediately that I can help. Don’t have a website? We’ll sort it out it’s part of the service. I can bring people to your website, to your myspace, to your youtube . . . then what?

We’re setting up aweber email management and we’re developing automated systems to deliver content to fans, engaging them, without drain on artists or artist marketing’s time resources. We’re developing funnels, and sales techniques, and thinking of how fan niches will be able to act i na way that contributes to artist revenue.

I meet artists who are already using ppc and online advertising and it’s great because I seem to have a real knack for this stuff, and I’m excited because after quite awhile, several of my artists are graduating to a point where serious promotion can actually begin because finally they have the platform in place to engage and test and tweak.

See helps also of course when everything’s paid for. Been spending a lot of time snooping around looking for coupons and ways to leverage online advertising, and my goal is to continually be able to access free advertising credits so I can just basically rain qualified traffic on artist landing pages and websites.

I have been running my first adwords campaigns for an artist release and I’m pretty happy with it. I’m using a whole different strategy than what I would with the gigs, in fact I’m just skimming cheap cheap 2c clicks so even $1 a day is buying 50 qualified clicks, so we’re actually trying to get serious now.

When I can sit down with a artist and say:

50 clicks costs $1

it takes 50 clicks to get 1 email sign up (a very conservative number for arguments sake)

1 every 20 email sign ups buys a song

So for every $20 you spend you’re making 69c.

Not too hot. Don’t worry, we’re still at the mouth of the funnel!

We optimize the site to improve conversion. We improve our proposition to encourage more people to sign up. We keep trying, maybe we can improve visitor sign up ratios, perhaps even double it if it’s as bad as 1 in 50 – baring in mind these are qualified targets who know what they’re looking for.

We spend $200, so after a few months, you’ve got 400+ people on your list, maybe more if we’ve grabbed people from mysapce, youtube and facebook promotions, google SEO and even more if we’ve improved on our abysmal 2% conversion rate. You’re half way to the 1k mark and you’re interacting with your list and providing valuable content with regular contact, both automated and spontaneous.

By this stage you would have to set aside some time for fan correspondence.

So you release another digital product, again, even if just 5% of your list make associated purchases

But I suppose this is where I’ve never explained the magic of how an internet marketer works their list. You’re not just going to be offering a song for $1 and getting a crappy 5% conversion rate and selling 20 songs. oh no no! You’re gonna work that list! For real!

You’re going to make an offer so awesome that they can’t refuse!

So even if you only convert 10% to sales and get .69c per sale, you’ll only have made $27.60 back on $200.

Still not that hot.

Now there’s a few things we could do. I don’t want to go to into it, none of my clients are at this stage yet, and I’m not to big on crystal balls.

But if it were my busines I’d look at:

- .69c is jack all. We need to find products that make higher margins and are perceived as higher value.

- we have 400 people who have given permission for us to contact them. Let’s evangelize them, let’s turn them and motivate them into people who will sign up more people. Agin, killer propositions, killer incentives.

- we examine how authentic or credible it would be perceived if the artist was to begin promtoiong affiliate offers, we have to examine and research what appropriate affiliate offers exist that could work within a artists brand.

- killer content, killer branding will drive fan interaction and development but we can only present and distribute content, we can’t create authentic primary content for you with out y’know . . . you need dedicated support staff for that.

So this is really important. In the same way it’s pretty useless trying to promote music online without an adequate platform, why even try and plant a viral marketing seed without a garden?

Having developed a core fanbase, managed from email, you have a launching pad, a tinderbox from which to start a viral fire.

And finally the conclusion I’ve been getting at – If you then spend another $200 over several months and build your fan list to 800+ and then offer them a new product that 10% go ahead and purchase and your total revenue from sales would be $55.20.

We don’t want to get too carried away, but if you’re willing to put the ground work in first, and after 6 months you could convince 20% of 800 email list members to buy your album DIRECTLY FROM YOU for only $5 – you could make $800 right there and that’s sounding a bit more like it.

So although your promotions budget stays steady, you’re revenue is growing – that’s without any fancy viral engagement affiliate high value incentive type ideas – because you’ve maintained a connection with fans, you’re developing relationships without getting pushy to make the sale.

Again, little less crystal ball please, but – there will be a tipping point if you are succesful in engaging your list, oh and that other thing, you’re music is actually really good.

It’s important to mention but remember my job is not to tell you whether your music is good. It’s to try and make money from it. And it doesn’t matter in fyou’re not the greatest musician in the world if your character and authenticity shines.

So just a few more things before I wrap up:

Another thing I’m working on is mastering RSS plug ins, so my artists don’t have to maintain multiple blogs, and in future staff will be able to perform quick rewrites to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Duplicate content is not the worst thing in the world, but y’know, it’s good to do what you can, if you can.

And finally:

The tone of this blog, especially these diary posts, are to look into the day to day stuff I’m actually doing, and what I’m actually thinking.

We are seriously moving to different business structures, attention and trust based economies. You won’t have to pay me. You just have to trust me. Same with your fans.  If you can be patient and accept the delayed gratification, forget about selling stuff, by creating trust and authority to the point where you have the attention of 1000 people who care what you say and think, there’s going to be far more interesting ways to get paid and paid more that 69c per song sale.

Why am I even dealing with artists who want to sell songs?

69c? Who cares about .69c?

Okay, I gotta get back to tweaking my sites and making them all fresh and lovely for all my visitors.

Talk soon, Don’t forget to email me matt kurbpromo@gmail.com for music marketing services – $500 for 3 months!

Best Italian Electronic Dance Music Techno DJ Producer 2009

Purepath is the latest project from italian dance music DJ, Producer and visionary Alberto Bambini who under a number of guises, including his work with Mabel Project has made him a noted dance music artist hailing out of the clubs of Lucca and Florence in Tuscany.

The debut album from the Purepath project is sure to suprise, branching out from traditional electronic dance music to other styles including rock techno and a range of other electronic and dance styles including ambient and deeply atmospheric tracks.

The new Purepath album “Overburning” is about to drop in March 2009 so don’t miss out on your chance to be one of the first to hear the latest release from the Italian DJ/Producer that has been described as ” . . . the most innovative musician on the scene”

After years of dance music, Purepath felt the inspiration behind this album project needed to take a new direction, not abandoning his commitment to club style techno dance music and his history as a top italian dj pushing the electronic dance music sound he had produced in the past, but progressing and flowing forward with the electronic stream into an ocean of musical possibilities.

Now, in 2009, the music is ready to change.

Starting out on a new musical path, Alberto Bambini alias Purepath, launches the album project “Overburning”, a musically varied and diverse release ranging from pop to electronic, from rock to ambient.

Advance reviews have already called Overburning “A real concentrate of different styles for every taste that underlines his great songwriting ability.”

Purepath is forging a reputation as an eclectic DJ and Producer presenting a fresh, always suprising and emotional sound: This is the sound of Alberto Bambini, best known as Purepath.

The Purepath passion for music started when Alberto was just 7 and at 16 he began his career as a DJ behind the decks of Florence and Toscana’s (Tuscany, northern Italy) hottest clubs.

Purepath’s journey shifted into musical production some time later, beginning to produce in his personal recording studio dance songs that attracted the attention of some important labels. Working closely in the industry alongside labels such as Flying Records, Energy, Emi, Sony and Gitana, he sold over 600.000 copies all over Europe in 2000 thanks to Mabel project and the ’Disco Disco“ single, that then went on to be given the remix treatment by top English DJ Nick Sentience.

Since then, Purepath has been performing steadily as a DJ, dropping his signature sound in the hottest European clubs, and becoming one of the main protagonists of English sound and respected as “one of the most innovative DJ’s on the scene”. Purepath, now held in the highest esteem on the club circuit, is now preparing to break out with his latest album project “Overburning”.

“Overburning” from a musical point of view, is a project committed to a varied and diverse electronic dance sound, featuring several stand out collaborations such as with vocalist Tiff Lacey (already known for her appearances on songs by Paul Oakenfold, ATB and others), Sara Berg and Simone Onorante.

Other influences Purepath states as significant in the development of his unique sound are:

Moby
Enya
Depeche Mode
Dave Gahan
Brian Eno
Coldplay
Imogen Heap

Purepath made his artistic debut in Lucca 15 years ago, a student of music who began early at age 7. It wasn’t long before Purepath began to combine his passion for technology with a love of music. He started deejaying in local clubs when he was 16, working nights at Tuscan night spots and dance parties. From there, he began to build his own “personal” studio and make a name for himself producing his own club tracks, attracting the attention of some of the biggest Italian labels and snatched up first by Flying Records, before going on to work with some of the Italy’s most recognised dance labels, such as Energy, Gitana, getting major label support from EMI, Sony Music and many more.

In 2000, he worked together with Gitana Records to produce the massive hit “Disco Disco” (which sold over 600,000 copies sold worldwide), which was then remixed by some of Europe’s top name DJs, including Nick Sentience (UK). His “exciting” new sound was heard during his sets deejaying various clubs across Europe.

In 2007 the metamorphosis of Purepath began. Experimenting with new sounds and new atmosphere, Purepath embarked on a new musical journey, attemptingt to mix and bring together all the influences and trails of his musical experiences. Now, he begins his musical voyage, collaborating with recognised vocalists and musicians hailing from across the globe.

Currently he is preparing to release his first full length Purepath album project entitled “Overburning”.

Kurb Promotions provides online Music Marketing and Management Services for Artists.

Email: kurbpromo@gmail.com – Massive Free Facebook Promotions Campaign offered with every 3 month online artist management package. Our services include:

• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic Design
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions
• Blog Promotion