Setting up the new artist community at http://newmusicmarketing.com and my new blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info has been slow going as - I’m sure you’re aware, my expertise is in marketing and promotion, I have passable web and graphic design skills, but not so much when it comes to administration and the back end.
And it shouldn’t be that way, because artists need this stuff, and they need it to be easy! It’s hard enough worrying about the creative side and the marketing stuff on top of technical details!
In fact it really gets me hopping mad because this technical stuff must be air tight or very very bad things happen, and it happens to the best.
What about poor old Dubber from New Music Strategies. Didn’t pay his hosting bill on time so they shut him down and took his domain name hostage for about a week or so. http://newmusicstrategies.com. 2000+ subscribed readers and just given short shift, never mind the please and thank you's!
SO - you’ve got to make sure the technicalities of running your website and blog and the platforms artists are using to carry out effective online communication and revenue generation are rock solid. That’s what I’m doing right now with a whole bunch of blogs, websites I’m responsible for and of course the new artist community as well and boy it hasn’t been easy!
Do you know what a host is? A server, A domain? That’s good. Bandwidth allocation, server speeds, security and backup . . . what about frickin DNS, MySQL databases and PHP code. Huh? Any takers? That’s what I thought.
It’s scary business. Now picture yourself in 2010.
You sell digital and physical products from your website
You sell advertising and lucrative relevant niche related affiliate offers from your website
Your fans interact with you and one another through the website
Music industry people with opportunities will be accessing your content and communicating with you through your website
You may even be doing futuristic stuff – automated gig booking, and smart data systems for gathering and distributing information for and about gigs and fans.
Fans may be interacting with your digital products to create their own customisable cd tracklists, cover art, merchandise, etc.
So if your website starts to become directly or indirectly your main source of contact that leads to revenue generating activities – like mine or radioheads is - it’s more than an eeny weeny problem if well . . . there’s any kind of problem that cuts off the cash – like if the website goes kaput, gets hacked, or you just haven't got the service in place to meet the technical needs of doing a decent amount of business on the net – the site doesn’t load quickly, audio and video content is choppy and worst of all, there’s problems using the retail interface when consumers purchase digital products.
Any website that asks you for your credit card or your paypal or whatever and then starts doing weird stuff and not loading up properly is not going to put your average fan at ease.
Remember, marketing is about solving other people’s problems, so I accept that’s what I have to do with the new artist community coming soon to
http://newmusicmarketing.com
create a easy hassle free service for artists who shouldn’t need to worry about having a website and a blog and whatever else they should need –so I’m looking forward to a time very soon when we’re going to have a person on board who’s just going to have it taken care of so our artists never have any problems no matter how many people are coming through their sites and blogs, or whatever they want to try.
That would be a great relief as I wait for progress on these current projects!!!
Understanding the role of technology is part of the uncertainty of the digital environment – knowing what has to be done, getting a fair deal – the difference between getting expert help when you need it and being overcharged.
But realistically, a professional artist just cant concern themselves with these details unless they have the appropriate contacts, they need a resource such as the http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/ artist community so they have an easily affordable service that is staged to cover all the support required online at each level of their professional career – Administration, Presentation as well as Marketing and promotion.
Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.
Follow our blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info for cutting edge web promotion as we launch http://newmusicmarketing.com - the exclusive artist community putting artists in control of their online promotion and revenue management.
Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.
kurbpromo@gmail.com
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