Marketing for Musicians & Fans

Forget the artists for the moment – forget about what the DJ wants, what the band or their manger wants and let’s focus in on you – the fan – the customer.  What do you want?  It’s great to get a hand written note from your favorite player – maybe a signed T-shirt or a retweet from the lead singer but what if they were so busy interacting with their fans, with you, that they didn’t have time for music?   What if you demand so much of their time that their next album sucks?

We all know there has been a huge change in the Music business over the last decade – it’s not just about music – this affects any business where the product can be digitized and replicated for zero cost.  Everything changes – production changes, distribution changes and marketing sure as hell changes.  I’m currently studying at the Berklee College of Music: Online Music Marketing with TopSpin and it is fascinating.

The core discussion is centered on Direct to Fan marketing; we know you all love an acronym so we’ll refer to it as DTF marketing from here on.  DTF marketing is brilliant – it means you don’t have to pander to anybody else, no dealing with coke addled label reps or bigger picture politics – you can do whatever you want.  You can release your album – call it a ridiculous name and stick candy covered elves on the front and the only people you need to answer to are your fans.  It all sounds utopian doesn’t it?

Except there’s a problem; what if you don’t have a lot of fans?  What if you weren’t “broken” by the existing label system and you’re sitting in front of your laptop wondering who to email next?

The concept being pushed by the TopSpin team is that of the Middle Class musician – basically in the old days (like 2 years ago!) you either made it - i.e. signed with a label, got your album funded and got promoted through the system (and even then it was unlikely that you would actually “make it”) or you didn’t make it – i.e. you didn’t get signed, didn’t get to make your album and didn’t get hot groupie sex.

The middle class musician falls somewhere in between the two extremes – you might not become the next John Mayer or Death Cab, but you do get your album made and can quite probably make a living from having a couple of thousand fans – if you’re a sole artist.  However – the minute you start to scale – the minute you have 5 members in the band you need more fans and without access to label cash and label established marketing channels – how the hell do you get them?

The answer is through hard bloody work, one fan at a time, making real relationships with your audience, answering their emails, responding to their tweets, viewing their videos and listening to their mashups.  By becoming accessible you deepen the bond between band and fan and when you have something new – the fan will talk about it and share it with their friends – the marketing of your music spreads organically through the fan base – your fans are your marketing – not the radio station.

But each fan demands your time – the story of Jonathon Coulton scares the hell out of me – great indie artist, started writing and posting a song a day, got some traction, grew his fan base by developing immediate online relationships with them, was super smart about his career and now probably makes around $100k a year as a truly independent artist.  So – what’s scary about that?  Well – The last I heard, Jonathon was spending 6 hours a day at his laptop maintaining the relationship with his fans which is great – but – where’s the time for music in that?  Not only that – how can he possibly scale it any bigger using the same model – surely more fans means more time online and eventually he’s going to reach a point where he can no longer maintain a deep enough relationship with his existing fans, let alone his new fans and ultimately things will slow down and then decline.

Add on top of that that if you’re a 4 piece rock band – you need 4 times as many fans as Jonathon has in order to get a decent lifestyle, which requires 4 times as much work and we haven’t even touched on upfront costs.

There has to be a middle ground – there has to be a way for the fan to feel that they’re connected with the artists and that they’re not going through some lame corporate PR house and likewise there has to be some way for the artists to wake up in the morning, smoke a doobie and pick up their instrument without worrying about the 170 emails in their inbox.

That’s the challenge and over the next few weeks, Alex and I are going to be developing our solution for this – we welcome your comments.

Image Credit:  Source Flickr Author: Amarand Agasi

Myxer - Free Ringtones & More

There are many ways to get ringtones out to your fans but by far the easiest way is to hook up with Myxer.    You can upload tracks, images even your videos and use the platform to get the content distributed straight into the hands of your most ardent followers.  Check them out here:

I first came across Myxer a couple of years back when I was on the Kelli gig and looking for a ringtone solution.  It was late 2007 and Twitter was just starting to kick off, nobody real got it – least of all the team I was working with, but I found it to be an incredible way to access information.

Having gone through the traditional Google search for ringtone providers I ran an early Twitter search for anybody tweeting about ringtones and came across @sass. Jeff Sass is one of the nicest guys you can meet – he’s been working in entertainment and tech for most of his life and for the last 3 years has been the VP of Business Development at Myxer.  A few swapped tweets and phone calls later Kelli was the featured Country artist of the day and we shifted several thousand ringtone downloads before the tour bus even rolled.

What I like about Myxer is that for a big company they are very focused on the Indie artist - if they can help you out they will.  Mobile still has a way to go in terms of over the air track downloads and general usability – but it’s coming.  Companies like Myxer can get you into the game for free and if you’re not there – you’re missing out.

Jeff writes an insightful blog on all things industry and tech over at sassholes – check it out - there’s plenty of good information can help you to reach your fans in better and smarter ways – and who doesn’t need that?

One Track Mind - Music Discovery Made Easy, One Track at a Time

For the next couple of weeks in support of the #FreeChaos competition, we’re going to be writing about music sites that we dig and that offer resources to independent bands / artists / DJs.  One of my favorite sites for music blogs is:

One Track Mind – Music Discovery Made Easy, One Song at a Time.

The idea of the Music Blog has been around many years – getting featured on Pitchfork or even The Hype Machine can do you a lot of favors – but those gates often have ”Industry” keepers – so what’s a band to do?

Well – you could of course sit down with The Hype Machine’s List of Music Blogs and contact every single one of them or – you could contact One Track Mind.  In keeping with their tag line they sure make it easy to discover new music.  Sign up for the daily email or get the track delivered to your RSS reader and every day you’ll get a song that you can stream immediately and download with a knowledgeable write up that delivers useful information about the track and the artist.

Go to the actual site and you can see that Danny (the rather accomplished site owner) grades the track on three scales: Originality, Repeat Listen Potential and Overall Verdict.  Which I initially thought was a little weird but over time has really started to make sense.  You can rate each track on a scale of 1 to 10 and of course leave a comment if you’re so inclined – and the most popular tracks are promoted to the community – genius!

Whether Danny has some Scandinavian roots I’m not sure but he sure does dig northern European bands and my music library has some great music I would never have come across – check out this track from Friska Viljor – “Wohlwill Strasse” – if it doesn’t make you want to get up and move to Stochkholm right now – then I’m a Dutchman.

Of course – couldn’t let this post go without acknowledging the hip to one of my new favorite Scottish Acts – Malcolm Middleton – check out Red Travellin Socks - the build to the final chorus push at 4:20 is one of my all time favorites. I immediately went out and bought Waxing Gibbous as a result – who says the music business is dead?

Finally – if you’re in the Denver area and are looking for a photographer – check out the amazing work from Danny’s partner – seriously good work – Nina Barry makes normal people look like Movie Stars.

Give Your Girlfiend Tim Halperin For Valentine's Day

Tim Halperin's music is piano driven accessible pop / rock – think The Fray, Ben Folds, ColdPlay with an 80’s twist – that kind of thing – he’s got a great distinctive voice that sits nicely on top and he writes the kind of songs that make your girlfriend open up.

But we’re writing about him today ‘cos we want to throw a light on some of the great ideas he’s putting into place to get his career going.  First off – check this video out:

How cool is that – you’ve got another 2 days to get in there.  What a great idea and doesn’t he come across totally charming and genuine on the video – you don’t exactly need a $5k video budget to make this work do you?

What really struck me though his how he’s quite literally “playing to his audience”- clever guy, playing the Sororities – that’s genius!  Not only do you get gigs you get gigs in front of chicks – in their houses – where their rooms are – as I said Genius.

He’s got smart of use of merch with a hook up into Zazzle – a great "Help Tim” page where he tells you how you can help him and how to connect across his various networks – and finally he’s making good use of NoiseTrade – another tool that helps get his music out and about while still allowing him to make dough.

His site design is pretty simple and straightforward – I reckon he could benefit from having a blog – it would put his videos, photography and news into some kind of context. It looks as though he's on the Joomla platform right now - which is fine but not so easy to get blogging.

If Tim entered the #FREECHAOS competition he could win a brand new spangly wordpress site that would make blogging a snap - it would also get rid of those janky urls which must be buggering up his SEO.

Overall however – I think he’s doing a pretty good job.  If that kind of music is your thing – check him out – he makes it really easy to get hold of him.

Is Your Band A Business?

You’d better bloody believe it, and just like any business out there – you want it to be easy for customers – call them fans – to find you and give you money.

I’ve been in bands on and off pretty much my whole life; whether as a 6 year old dressed up as Gary Glitter (which in retrospect is just wrong!) or as a “grown up” keyboard player – there’s nothing like the dream of making it in music.  There is however a big difference between playing at it and actually living it – a huge part of that difference is how you manage your online presence.

We know that there is a growing market for easy to update websites that integrate seamlessly with social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook and that don’t require a computer science degree to use.  We also recognize that having an easy to use website doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s enough time in the day for the business owner (lead singer, drummer or keyboard player – guitar players are usually too busy screwing around with their tone!) to write and respond to blog comments, Facebook friend requests or tweets.

If at this point you’re all squeamish about looking at your music – your art – as a business than you’re reading the wrong website. Remember, to do this professionally you need people to give you money and not just once, but again and again for as long as you are making music.

We work with Bands but we also work with Realtors and Telecoms Agents – the product is different but the business relationship is always the same. If you can find the time to work your website, manage your Facebook page and keep your fans – call them customers – updated by email – you dramatically increase your chances of doing this for the rest of your life.

Want to learn more? Contact us..

Marketing Your Business Online

Kilted Chaos is launching a new service for business owners who want to market their business online.  Focusing on four key areas, we will:

1/ Write quality content that is SEO optimized and interesting for the visitor to read

2/ Manage and respond to responses to content

3/ Produce easy to understand weekly analytics and adapt behavior in light of data

4/ Handle all technical upgrades and implement & suggest new technologies as appropriate

So you’ve got your easy to update website, a professional looking logo and avatar, a Twitter account a Facebook page and a few pictures of your business up on Flickr, what next?  Well, this is supposed to be the easy bit, (easy in that you don’t need any tech skills to do it): adding content, writing blog posts, talking about your business and what you do, responding to comments and tweets, making friends with your customers – oh and yes - still managing the day to day operations of your business.

For the majority of our clients it’s the business owner themselves who sits at the computer, during the trading day if they’re lucky, but more typically out of hours.  The rush of content that seems so easy in the first couple of weeks becomes harder to sustain and after a few months dries up.   There’s no doubt that marketing your business online brings customers in and it’s true that the tools developed in the last few years have practically eliminated the technical barriers – however, no one has yet invented the magic machine that generates the extra hours in the day needed to do all this.

The trap that a lot of small business owners fall into at this point is to think that it is all about the addition of content – and nice “keyword heavy” content at that.  It’s pretty easy to find someone who will write you a keyword packed article for $5.00 that is practically unreadable.   For a better understanding of what your site content should be, check out this great article on web copy from Claire Mason of Leapfrogg – a classy boutique digital marketing firm in the UK.

 But say that you’ve seen the light and have employed a professional writer, one that can actually project enthusiasm for your product with correct spelling and grammar – what happens next?  A new blog post will register on your Twitter feed and on your Facebook page and a customer can interact with that content through a blog comment, a retweet, a reply to a tweet, a post on your wall, etc – who’s going to respond to that?

And with all this activity taking place – who’s tracking what’s working and what isn’t?  Sure you have sales receipts as the ultimate arbiter of success but using blogging and social media to market your business takes time.  You don’t see results straight away, it takes a while to generate reputation and for people to react to that reputation.  If you’re really dropping the hammer you might have produced 25 blog posts over a two month period – which ones were successful and why – how can you learn from your content – what do the analytics say?

Finally – the predominately free tools that you’re now using – WordPress, Plugins, commenting systems, etc – they all get upgraded as new technologies are implemented and security holes fixed.  They’re super easy to upgrade but someone needs to be on top of it – and if you’re allocating out one aspect of your online marketing – should you not make sure the core machinery is taken care of?

There’s a lot to think about – as evidenced by the length of this post – but if you want to start taking your online marketing seriously – get in touch – prices start from as low as $100.

Photo Credit: grunge on Flickr