www.kurb.co.nz

digital music promotion on the internet: The quick guide

2008-07-24T23:29:00.000+12:00

1 THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

How is digital technology changing the music industry and how soon can we expect these changes to impact the way we can make money from a career in music?

The music industry is fine. The recording industry that has dominated the music industry until now is not.

More opportunites represent more competition.

How Record labels dominated the old music industry:

*Ways music made money: CD’s, Touring, Merchandise, Endorsements/Appearances, Publishing, royalties and licensing.
*Record labels: Controlled recording, manufacture, and promotion (media)

*Music was released in album format to maximise revenue

How the digital revolution is a fundamental shift in the music business

* The physical product of music that was manufactured copies on CD, cassette, and LP now can now be distributed and copied without cost.
* The musical industry was often arbitrated completely by a handful of music corporations known as the “major labels” now artists can connect directly to a mass of fans

* Mass communication and marketing controlled by mass media, now users/fans control online media by choosing what they care about

The digital revolution in the music industry is the first of many digital disruptions to hit major industries.

* dramatically reduced recording and production costs

* need for physical distribution eliminated
* power of traditional media in decline due to growth of online information and networks

The growth of independent music began before the spread of the internet in 1990’s effected by:

e.g. CD Baby, music buyers bemoaning “album filler”, artists bemoaning contractual obligations to labels, Independently successful artists such (e.g. Ani Defranco) and local co operative scenes (Dunedin, Seattle, Jamaica, Detroit) creating niches and the long tail of consumer choice.

Changes and what we can expect in the future:

Important: The digital revolution is inevitably changing the music industry, how quickly the changes are effective is the question.

- Physical purchases still account for 90% of all revenue. But download revenue is expected to surpass that of physical sales in 2012
- All over revenues from recorded music are expected to continue to decline at roughly 10% per annum
- All major labels have cut staff in response to declining revenues. EMI has recently shed 2000 jobs.

So physical music products are still likely to have a market in the future though sales and profit margins will continue to decline.

My personal opinion is that:

- the value of recorded music will continue to decline until it is absorbed as a service
- the traditional label format will decline in favour of independent or loosely affiliated groups of artists and related service providers (like myself)
- the relevance of the album format is tenuous

These concepts are all open to innovation around new ways of creating value for consumers. When someone perfects a better way that works consistently the old model will crumble. What is that better way?

2 HOW TO BECOME A REAL BIG FAMOUS ON THE INTERWEBS

Digital Content Checklist for an online promotion campaign

Mp3’s - Record and encode your songs.

Bio - Words for Google, god of the internet. Who and what and where for fans AND Google to understand.

.Jpg - making a connection as a real person and branding

Video - you don’t have to do video (not “A video” but “video” – ongoing video content!) But it’s just like MTV in the 80’s. Now the digital revolution is underway, they will just like people who have videos more, because videos help fans engage and connect, and fans would rather be engaged and connected.

What is the best way to sell my music online?

- Declining value of music vs. speed of change = selling copies of recordings remains viable.

- www.itunes.com - itunes. Accounts for over 75% of all retail downloads. The future of the download market is currently tied to itunes.

- Online retail is just like physical retail: you can sell your music in as many shops as you like but you can only pick one distributor

Credible choices for online distribution:

www.cdbaby.net CD Baby is great for including physical distribution for unestablished artists

Pro’s: Physical distro, flat fee of $35, reputable company, handles processing

Cons: Have to send 5 physical copies of release to US, take 15% of sale, up to 2 months processing

www.tunecore.com Tunecore provides great online service for artists with established fan bases

Pro’s: 0% commission, single release option
Con’s: Ongoing fees, store by store fee, no physical distribution,

Storefront widgets – E.G. www.nimbit.com 3^rd party applications for retailing across web/social platforms.

Amplifier + Trademe + Local distro: www.amplifier.co.nz , www.trademe.co.nz , www.smokecds.co.nz

- The importance of servicing local niches and local connections

- Building fan relationships on NZ’s most popular local website 1 by 1.

Whats the big deal about social networking and web 2.0?

Social media is content, and content is promotion. “owning more of the internet”

Social networking for google: remember keywords and keyword rich backlinks

OMD + free mp3’s

Old school daddies

www.download.com
www.mp3.com

www.soundclick.com

www.mp3.com.au

New school laddies

www.reverbnation.com

www.garageband.com (ilike)

www.last.fm

THE MYSPACE STORY

Myspace changed online culture and made the internet (social media) mainstream. internet hasn’t quite overtaken television as teenagers main media source but will do so in the next 2-3 years. Myspace despite it’s recent decline as a social destination is still the no. 1 music website in the world.

Layout: Keep it modest and don’t over reach. Beware pre-made custom layouts. The function of your Myspace is a showcase, a shop window display, an advertisement. Keep it functional and outcome focused – direct your traffic (ie “check out the new video” “sign up for our mailing list to be notified of our next exclusive mp3 giveaway”)

- use your title and display image creatively (think about your vanguard + first impressions)

- bands ramming their downloads and merchandise down your throat doesn’t feel right – build relationships

But what about promotion? What about the getting an edge in Social media?

Promotion: Is content. Is having something to say. That is, hype is dead. Feed out content. Create access. Destroy friction. Syndicate

Spam and promotion: Don’t try this at home - Its about them not you. Permission marketing. www.sethgodin.com

*spam disclaimer: “spam” is unsolicited electronic contact and is illegal. When I refer to “spam” I refer to bots, scripts and software that automate communication tasks. Bands should refrain from engaging in legally dubious attempts to contact unqualified and unidentified targets unsolicited.

You’re not on social networks to Sell your CD. You’re there to make friends, to have fun. It’s about engaging attention and turning that attention into a connection.

Rule #1 of social media: engage your audience where they are. Manage time SM commitments

- but engage highly qualified local niche sites: www.punkas.co.nz , www.bassdrop.co.nz

Social Networking: Myspace, www.facebook.com , www.bebo.com ,

- interacting, engaging and joining the conversation ( I don’t want to buy your t-shirt . . . yet!)
- sub networks and sub communities – engage niches within broader networks

Video: www.youtube.com, www.revver.com, www.megavideo.com,

- the importance of tags in internal searches, links, bio
- automated distribution and tubemogul
- future video revenue?

Microblogging/Micronetworking: www.twitter.com

Social Music sites: www.last.fm, www.reverbnation.com, www.garageband.com , www.Imeem.com

- Aggregation of user data for recommendations (last.fm)

- Widgetisation and 3^rd party tools (reverbnation and ilike)

- streaming royalties (last.fm, reverbnation and Imeem)

Social Bookmarking: www.stumbleupon.com
- Bookmarks your favourite webpages for public use. Aggregates user data. Google juice tool.

Socially organised information: www.wikipedia.com, www.squidoo.com

RSS, P2P and Podcasts

- RSS, content syndication and www.feedburner.com –
- P2P, peer sharing networks, www.limewire.com etc –
- Podcasts, enclosures, Itunes + podcast networks –

Free Blogs: www.wordpress.com , www.blogger.com

Whats the best thing I can do right now for my music? Write another blog post

Little blogging: Owning more of the web

Big blogging: Creating a channel for content delivery and audience engagement

PART 3: CREATING REVENUE ONLINE

YOUR BLOG AND YOUR WEBSITE – WHAT’S WHAT

- building search presence, building revenue sources, building engagement with audiences

Do we really have to write a blog? No. But promotion is content. You engage online audiences by feeding content through your online channel and accumulating online presence and a blog is in many ways a website that has been optimised for regular, frequent and ongoing delivery of content in order to engage.

How can I use my website to build a career?

Your website, blogs and social networks allows you to build contacts, create revenue and build a career without having to gain “old model” industry acceptance.

Being consistent (consistently improving) + prolific is essential, as will engaging new technology give you the edge in digital promotion.

1 - Setting up your website

Domain name – keywords vs. branding: www.godaddy.com , www.1stdomains.co.nz
Hosting – www.hostgator.com – also www.bluehost.com and www.inmotionhosting.com

WEB DESIGN – contact kurbpromo@gmail.com

- issues of control and “independence”

- The digital revolution and evil technocrats who charge too much based on your ignorance

- web designers vs internet marketers (metatags, flash design)

- CMS (content management system)

2 - Promoting your blog and website

- What matters to google: keyword content, age + updates, and backlinks with anchor text

- Social Media which we’ve discussed
- leveraging content for promotion (www.ezinearticles.com, www.scribd.com )
- leveraging secondary services and products for promotion (ie ebook / widget – is for advanced users!)

- Advertising (Is for advanced users)

- offline crossovers (engage them!)

3 - Developing your website

- your website is a channel

- brand for engagement

- unique propositions create engagement

- foster community and interaction

engaging fan relationships: Email Lists: www.aweber.com, www.fanbridge.com, www.phplist.com
- building a unique value proposition around an emailing list (or; is the future hard?)

How and when are we going to get money from the internet?

We know the music industry is moving online – how will musicians profit and when will technology make new income streams viable?

- is the music industry converging into a greater digital content industry (e.g. rock star, guitar hero)

- What and where is the value of music going to be in the future + how can I capture this value

Diverse products, services and price structures
- Nine Inche Nails
- Korean/Asian Music Industry
- ringtones (www.myxer.com )

Really really get open minded about leveraging what you have to create new services and added value

Monetizing Ad supported content: www.adsense.com , www.problogger.com, www.we7.com

Brand expansion
- merchandising
- endorsements
- sponsorship

Leveraging Email lists, affiliate marketing and monetizing relationships
- fan supported models
- affiliate offers and niche storefronts
- high value commissions vs. low value music copies

Building and monetizing online communities
- web 2.0, c2c, facilitating access and community interaction, user generated content
- 1000 true fans
- gated communities and flat fee service access

- Licensing, publishing, royalties and synch fees
www.rumblefish.com , www.pumpaudio.com

- online publicity (not officially endorsed by Matt @ Kurb!)
www.radiodirectx.com , www.musicsubmit.com , www.sonicbids.com

My favourite blogs:

http://www.sethgodin.com – this one is a marketing one but its so good!

http://www.newmusicstrategies.com

http://www.musicthinktank.com

http://www.mediafuturist.com

http://www.bob-baker.com

http://www.sivers.org

Don’t forget to check out the new kurb artist community @

www.newmusicmarketing.com

www.kurb.co.nz for online marketing, budget cd and dvd services, budget postering services

And stay up to date with my blog:
www.kurbpromotion.wordpress.com / www.musicmarketingmanagement.com

Content IS Promotion: Internet Music Marketing presentation

2008-07-23T21:43:00.000+12:00

Hey thanks to Jason @ Depot Artspace and all those who came along to hear my very first presentation on digital music marketing and stuff.

As it turns out I get more than a biscuit. But the important thing for me was really some points I can make – as I often do – that are relevant to artists and one of the most important things I’ve been talking about recently but had to quickly skim because my talk was damn near 2 hours! Definitely room for improvement there. But I did feel good that even though I went on way too long and had to skim some of most important stuff about engaging fans and monetizing fan relationships, most people stuck around even though I went on and on.

The fact is, that online music promotion is complicated. You can catch up with some of those posts in my 7 part series here:

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and 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

And don’t forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com - it’s still free to join in July and we’re starting to add new in depth content already.

So in a lot of ways for me this presentation was a bit like a gig – and though I don’t see myself packing out stadiums at $50 a head for presentation talks on online music marketing - like most gigs when you’re starting out, it was an opportunity to get experience engaging deeply and in person with an audience.

I knew it was an opportunity to develop my presentation skills. Now there’s a reason that this applies and that’s not just about developing my skills as a performer.

It’s about the growing power of audio and video to provide a platform to really connect with a large, focused digital audience.

That means although there was an opportunity to improve my performance – which is really important for musicians, more so than for marketers – it was the knowledge that there would be a lot of power in digitally distributing this performance.

I knew there would be audio taken at the event and that I would be able to get into doing some videos based on the presentation content aftwerwards, and syndicate those videos (if theyre decent!) out over multiple online channels thus multiplying the effectiveness of my efforts.

Also it raises some points about how you engage.

There was some mention that I didn’t really use my talk as a platform for Kurb. I’m not one to shy away from a marketing opportunity, but this was about creating positive engagement.

I could have talked up myself and what I do, but there really is no substitute for value. If people who engage with your material walk away thinking “Wow, that was really good!” Then most of the work is done.

And that’s what it’s about. By just focusing on being as good as I could be and giving value to the audience . . . they know who I am, they know what I do, so will those who hear the podcast and watch the videos. The rest will just follow.

A lot of top bloggers can come across as quite sanctimonious and holier-than-thou when they talk about engaging audiences using new media. It’s all very well for them to talk about high quality, high value when they’re doing 5 figures a week and you’re still working your crappy job.

But I made a fresh assertion during this presentation when I said that “content IS promotion” during this talk, because every piece of high quality content is an opportunity to engage with your audience and advance the relationship.

When I think about all the work I’ll be doing on my videos over the next few days, and waiting on the audio stuff from Jason, I know it’s hardly going to convert directly into big profits and opportunities. (well, it might)

But I do know that it’s going to create opportunities to engage my existing audience as well as drawing in new people from around the world who are interested in the way I do business with and for musicians. If more people are going to get more value from this content then it’s going to foster relationships that lead to profitable interactions.

I emphasised this in different ways in my talk, but I know, especially when I get a frantic email or call from a musician that though many people do connect with my blog, my bulletins etc. and that’s been great, video and audio content gives you so much scope for real engagement and real connection.

This is how I’m talking about engaging fans.

It is the 80’s again – without video you could be losing your edge in your ability to connect with people about what you’re doing.

I kept on thinking about radioheads New years webcast which I checked out in regards to these videos I’ll be working on.

I’ll admit I do tend to avoid listening to a lot of music and watching a lot of music video simply because I am very easily influenced. But given the massive buzz around Radiohead, I couldn’t help it!

And watching their webcast we could see the way that Radiohead make their music, as they performed it in their own rehersal/recording space, we could see them performing with passion, we could see that their drummer does look kinda weird, like drummers do, but he’s definitely into it. On the stroke of midnight they stood around in the pitch black freezing cold in a field outside the studio and did an acoustic version of one of their songs.

Their was some weird kinda arty stuff and short poems between each song.

So long story short, I was engaged. They got me, and here I am, responding positively to the free secondary content from radiohead I engaged with.

Radiohead perhaps had some deal for the webcasting of the video but really, there wasn’t big money in this webcast for them. It wasn’t about sales and marketing, it was about engaging fans with content, and letting the rest take care of itself.

I think for those who purchased “In rainbows” it would feel like a bonus, but the flip of that was that for those who didn’t purchase “In Rainbows” it was a step forward in building that relationship through engagement with content to a point where that could certainly happen under the right circumstances.

For those who did purchase John Reese’s “Traffic Secrets” they probably felt they already had received much value in the free videos they watched, paying for the full program was just a follow through.

I’m going to be putting up notes from my talk on my blog soon – both from my hand out and from my own extended notes . . .

Because we all know – more content – more words – more love from google – more opportunites to engage with content and foster relationships and interactions that lead to monetization.

Just like John Reese says: “Own more of the net!”

And Matt Turner says: “Content IS Promotion”

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist 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

http://www.kurb.co.nz

http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo

http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo

http://www.twitter.com/mattnz

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Online Music Promo - Engaging, Email Lists and Actually Monetizing: Lucky 7 Final chapter

2008-07-21T18:52:00.000+12:00

Okay on we go with the very last episode of our 3 part series on getting your head around online promotion basics and then it just mutated into a seven part whopper!

In today s stunning conclusion it’s just all business. It’s not basic anything anymore because we’re actually engaging fans and we’re actually monetizing it.

Here's whats happened so far:

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and 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

And don’t forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/ - it’s still free to join in July and we’re starting to add new in depth content already.

And of course tomorrow @ The Depot in Devonport I’ll be be giving a presentation on all this stuff Check it out if you’re in auckland.

So it was cliffhanger end last time when we suddenly discovered while we were promoting our websites and building the power of our musics brand message to connect with audiences – it was the good old email list that formed a fundamental strategy for monetizing all along!

There are many unique propositions you can be using to monetise this valuable, influential brand you’ve built up and these relationships you’re building with your audience, but your potential fans don’t want to be bombarded by what you want to sell them. That's not real. They want to connect with a message that makes them open to having you earn their trust. And this is where the proposition of having new fans sign up for an email list is probably one of the most successful strategies to create income long term, because the relationship is based on respect for a fan who welcomes your interactions, and will be prepared to spend money as the relationship and the unique value grows.

As the music industry evolves, I always say well . . . the last time I saw the rulebook on making money, it was flying out the window. Only one thing holds true and that is creating value for the fans and managing the relationship leads to artist success.

I think most of the old music industry think Radiohead was just a bad dream. They need to wake up.
Okay so lets wrap up this thing by describing some different ways you can innovate to create revenue from your website and email list – and remember what I’ve said about new music business models – its not a horse race! You can ride every income stream that is worth the effort.

The idea is to continually innovate and optimize so that you are enhancing the value of your most profitable interactions and minimising the effort of your least profitable interactions. This is fundamental in guiding the innovative process.

Lets look at some areas for innovating monetization:

Pricing structure: Trent Reznors last Nine Inch Nails release was remarkable for the number of pricing iterations he created on different products available, so there was a product for fans at every level from a basic $5 download all the way up to a limited edition item valued a $300 that netted him $750,000 over the 48 hour period they took to sell out. The remarkable thing was also that this was an instrumental album, that though creating further options for licensing and synching, however was not really NIN's core content. But NIN's core fanbase is fully engaged and they dont care.

Income streams: The asian music market, where rampant piracy cripples the value of physical goods and copies, has led the way in showing how developing wide and deep ranges of products and service under the brand of an artist can actually leverage the effects of piracy.

The opportunities here to innovate abound. Maybe you need to have a serious and open minded think about what kind of products and services you can provide. I realised I could go to 6 year old’s birthdays and play pirates for $200 a pop, there’s this guy I heard about who offers to write and record love songs - mainly for the wedding market.

There's Bob Baker's buddy who sold 15,000 CD's on the pier playing cheesy love ballads twice a week for 18 months.

What have you got? Is it your raw technical skill? Is it your charisma? Is there are specific message around a common issue that peopel conenct with through your music? Do you have prolific output?Do you make a fashion statement with what you wear or a sexual statement with what you don't?

You need to identify exactly where you can creating the most value with your specific skills and doing those things that you love that dont seem like work and leverage it!

Fan supported: In the fan supported model which has already been demonstratably successful, the artist set up a system by which there was increasingly personalised rewards for example - $10 pre ordered a copy of the CD, $500 gave you a thank you in the CD liner notes, $5000 gave you a trip from anywhere in the US to stay courtesy of the artist for a weekend during the recording and participate on the backing vocal of one of the songs.

Ad supported revenue: We often talk about the digital revolution creating an “attention economy” that is, in a digital environment where copies of content cease to have financial value, the value is then transferred to the attention created through content and the opportunity that remains to create revenue from attention through advertising.

Advertising networks online are getting increasingly sophisticated, and although I hold fast to the assertion that in 2008, 1000 page views should equal 1000 cents earnings - and currently after blogging for over 9 months, that’s about what I earn from my blogs in a week – I honestly believe that conditions for online advertisers will improve across the board as the medium continues to improve and show its effectiveness. First, muso’s will start out with Google adsense ads, before looking into joining an ad network potentially capable of delivering more lucrative and more consistent targeted ads charged per impression, finally a successful established musician should be able to attract sufficient interest to be able to cut out the middleman and sell advertising directly to niche partners.

Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a lucrative form of online marketing that drives online sales with high commissions, thus attracting many like a modern day gold rush. Those with online products will join an affiliate network that will provide its “partners” (bloggers, webmasters etc.) with ad offers. The tracking of these sites and offers is a highly sophisticated commercial operation and once a sale can be traced to somebody who once visited your site with the corresponding ad displayed, you will be accredited with a 40%-75% commission on the sale value. As I’ve discussed before the range of products is staggering, and sure, miracle diets etc. do tend to sell better BUT what you’ve got to realise is that there are free offers that pay out. This means you can leverage your email list to present a variety of offers to your fans. But the fact that you are able to collect 75% commission on digital products does raise possibilities about relative product value.

E.G. – Buy a month worth of digital movie rental for $US40 (of which the band gets $US30) and get our new album (worth $10) free!!!

You getting me? Things could get interesting.

Monetized communities:

So monetizing communities is based around the concept that the content that drives your promotion and monetization through advertising etc. becomes exponential once you have harnessed fans to actually create content for you.

Discussion about you, discussion with you, discussion about content, interaction with content, deconstruction (“mash up”) of content . . . when your fans are doing this for you, you’ve now got a a wild freeform content generating, web ownaging machine!

You want them designing their own t-shirts and selling them to one another and taking a cut. “c2c” means “consumer to consumer”.

The way we do business is about to be fundamentally changed online.

But yes. Artists must accept relinquishing control.

In 2013 If some kid photoshops your face on a dogs body and sells 50,000 t shirts online then you’re going to have to take your 25% cut and massive exposure and sulk in the corner.

But on communities gotta touch on what I’m doing personally with kurb – as a working model – so you can see in practice the model of a high value online community that is monetized. And the fact that you can see that I’m doing it, it’s not some huge leap for you. Cost me a few hundy.

With http://www.newmusicmarketing.com I’ve set up a forum platform from which to distribute high value content. In my case it’s content that I feel is to valuable to share freely – in your case it’s most likely your music. But in creating a platform on which to monetize premium content and your fan relationships you can create dynamic propositions.

You can build a list of 1000 hardcore fans who are happy to commit to paying $1 per week ($1 per week????) and be part of a premium experience that gives them premium access (you stop in the members over the week to interact) and access to premium content: your music, videos, special exclusive content, giveaways, competitions and prizes, special free gigs, seriously, innovation can run wild!

BUT

like I said. It’s just one horse in the stable. Your making $1000 p/week of your premium membership sites – your also making pocket money out of advertising, digital retail, royalties and licensing, your gigging of course – even your good old CD’s and merch . . . y’know? The futures not dark.

But you gotta get started now. It’ll take years for your online presence to dvelop and mature.

Okay, So I hope you’ve enjoyed this series!

I’ll be doing a post soon about going back over your blog and editing it for optimisation as a clean up each of the articles in the series.

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and 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

And don’t forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/ - it’s still free to join in July and we’re starting to add new in depth content already.

And of course tomorrow @ The Depot in Devonport I’ll be be giving a presentation on all this stuff Check it out if you’re in auckland.

It’s time for me to get on with developing my community at http://newmusicmarketing.com

And I’ve got work to building my blogs presentation to build a more powerful brand and develop more and new ways of monetization.

Look for me at http://musicmarketingblog,info as I'm getting my act together here!

And make sure you subscribe by RSS because I just know I’m going to be talking more about branding, engaging fans and more about developing these relationships and monetized interactions soon.

Cheers!

marketing and monetizing a music artists website

2008-07-21T16:18:00.000+12:00

Okay so we been doing this series on online promotion, in the last post in the series we talked about the importance of your website and how to set one up.

Today we’re going to be revisiting a lot of ideas we’ve discussed about promoting your website - and talking about how you can use your website to create value for fans that leads to income.

Now we're getting into the real nitty gritty and moving beyond the basics. So this time we're going to be going through website promotion and we're going to cap it off in the next part by continuing to discuss building email lists and building deeper engagement with fans by fostering interactions and ongoing relationships.

Lets look over the series:

Part 1 is here: In digital we trust - preparing for digital music marketing and 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

And don't forget: Our new artist community has launched @ http://www.newmusicmarketing.com - it's still free to join in July and we're starting to add new in depth content.

And of course tomorrow @ The Depot in Devonport I'll be be giving a presentation on all this stuff Check it out if you're in auckland.

So when I’ve talked about building your website and how important your “internet property” is, it’s about creating an online channel for you to present your content and develop profitable interactions, and retaining control of that environment and those interactions.

Blogs and websites are very similar in the way that they are used as a platform to deliver content, and can be both used to conduct highly valuable propositions such as building an email list of fans from which to monetize continued interactions. Though if you’re innovative and creative your website can be used to create opportunities to drive deeper fan interaction with content that can be managed for monetization.

I tend to explain website promotion in terms of two concepts: Sales and Marketing. First comes marketing, that’s about bringing people to your website. We discussed Social Media, and we also talked about creating digital content, writing and blogging – making a lot of words in particular - to increase your depth of presence, “owning more of the net” and improving search based results. In this way, you can say content IS promotion.

But as your building your content and “owning more of the net”, committing yourself to developing your website into a platform that creates income from your music becomes a long and cumulative process.

Once you’ve worked to bring traffic to your site, we have to examine the sales process, because “Please buy our CD” in big letters wont work.

When I talk about increasing “sales”, or “conversions”, we are optimising the content that visitors to your site experience in order to produce a desired outcome. That is, put in broad terms, when a visit to your website results in the desired action by the visitor, whether that’s downloading a free song, signing up to an email list or even . . . engaging in an interaction which leads to monetization!

How can optimize your website to encourage more “sales”?

Often we can start with basic tweaks - increasing the access, the value and the uniqueness of the proposition.

But this is where we start to discuss the power of building relationships with fans. It comes back to engagement, it comes back to branding. The reality is, unless you engage you’re not likely to even get people interested in downloading your music free. So what engages people?

Well music obviously. But the problem is we’re moving beyond the era in which they used to just play music at you on the radio until you liked it. The struggle is getting them to listen. Getting them to get that far.

What will make them give your music a chance?

Branding. Branding through content that carries powerful messages fans identify with.

The house music videos of Benny Benassi and Eric Prydz carry strong visual messages about sexuality. The Hip Hop music videos of P Diddy et al carry strong visual messages about the rewards of financial success, while Coldplay alludes heavily to personal struggles intepreted through monogamy. These examples abound. Bob Marleys music is depicted as spiritual and political, Radiohead's music is depicted as having intellectual and political undertones.

Successful artists connect with their audience through strong brand associated messages.

Here again the importance of continuing to create content that enhances the brand value to the fans of what it is you represent. If you don’t carry strong messages in this way then you don’t really represent anything powerful or meaningful to people and so they fail to engage.

It’s not just about branding but also about being unique.

But it’s also about the proposition you’re presenting. It must carry value for your potential fan as well as being unique.

When I talk about the proposition that you are using your social networks and blogs and content to draw people to your site and draw people into, it’s not only a unique and valuable brand proposition such as:

“we UNIQUELY represent a brand powerfully associated with your identity”

but also a uniquely valuable proposition in order to capture the value in your brand as a relationship that can lead to profitable interactions such as:

”So sign up for mailing list so we can continue to have interactions based around uniquely valuable propositions that benefit you!”

So let me cut the marketing speak for one moment: It means unless people think you’re cool, they don’t care about your free mp3’s. they don’t.

It’s up to you to give them something to care about.

You gotta create the greatest opportunity and encouragement to sell the interaction that will escalate the relationship with the casual visitor.

That’s why you’ve got to go back to Rapino’s statement and recognise the role your website plays in building your email list.

“ . . . and it’s all about the website. Collecting email addresses and maximizing revenue . . . ”

So here we see the value of the email list. We can grasp the simple email list as a way to foster deeper relationships with fans and then and only then arriving at a point at which you can actually start making some money.

So coming right up is our last post in the series before we accept we've well and truly moved beyond the basics into the business of building relationships and innovating to create new value from those interactions.

Music 2.0: A new indie model

2008-07-16T16:28:00.000+12:00

The Web continues to play a central role in affecting radical, disruptive change in the music industry as musicians latch on to the latest Web 2.0 tools and bypass traditional producers and distributors. High Street music and video chains -- all the rage not that long ago -- seem to be closing outlets as quickly as they once opened them.

This technology-driven trend is also spawning a new breed of business development partners and market intermediaries: digital music distributors that leverage their technological expertise and "Net sense" to enable and facilitate musicians' desire to control content and deal directly with their fan base, not only to sell music to them, but also to allow them to participate in the creative process and financially as they try to reach larger audiences and build new markets.

"Getting the users involved is the No. 1 trend pretty much everywhere right now. SellaBand gets users to pay for bands studio time, Bootb.com allows people to contribute ideas for ad campaigns, Jpgmag.com is a user-generated photo magazine, etc., etc.," points out digital media and music futurist Gerd Leonhard, who operates MediaFuturist.com.

A New Breed

What's taken place along these lines is just the beginning of a music industry trend that will expand and deepen, according to Leonhard, who recently offered free downloads of his latest book, Music 2.0.

"What I call 'Music 2.0' is now very quickly becoming the mantra for the major labels: a Web-native music ecosystem," Leonhard told the E-Commerce Times. "More and more artists will be able to 'go direct' from the start and engage their fans from the get-go; both for creation as well as for marketing.

"Once more than 2 percent of the world is on broadband, this kind of 'networked creation' will explode. Much of it won't be that good, of course, but talent will rise to the top regardless. Bloggers are now like DJs: They pick bands to play and talk about, and become powerful super-nodes," Leonhard noted.

A new breed of digital music and media technology providers is playing an integral role in the process. As the Web has expanded, it has also disrupted and fragmented into innumerable parts the idea of the mass market that record labels, producers and distributors have long relied on to drive large-scale commercial penetration and success.

That's spelled opportunity for digital music technology providers and distributors such as IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, which uses its expertise in digital data distribution to provide independent musicians and music labels the means to reach markets both at home and abroad.
Selling Direct

In early May at the Digital NARM 2008 conference in San Francisco, IODA announced the general release of IODA Label Stores, a Web-based storefront for content distribution that enables labels and musicians to sell digital music directly to consumers.

A group of clients participated in IODA Label Stores' beta program, including Six Degrees Records, G7 Welcoming Committee Records, Paper Bag Records, Om Records, ABB Records, Birdman Records and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Each has strong brand recognition and loyal fan bases that they're looking to leverage by using IODA's technology to craft and develop direct-to-consumer music distribution models.

"In a time when big-box retailers are squeezing every last penny out of independent record labels, IODA Label Stores provides us with a way to get top-quality digital music directly to our fans using the latest Web 2.0 technologies and innovations," said Brent Corey, G7 Welcoming Committee Records' chief technology officer. "The control it gives us over pricing is ideal and has enabled us to be far more creative with our marketing."
The Snowball Effect

IODA's mobile business has grown more than 1,000 percent this past year alone, and though that's off a small base, it is still an impressive growth rate and indicates the IODA has its canoe running with the current.

Combining a passion for music and technological expertise and building from the ground up, IODA's management team is well on its way to building an influential global digital music distributor specialist and marketing partner.

IODA has been especially busy entering the European market this year, where it has partnered with digital music counterparts to establish new businesses in three countries -- first in the UK, then in France and most recently in Spain, where it established a new business with Spanish independent label DiscMedi and signed an international mobile content distribution deal with telecom giant Telefonica that will see its entire catalog of independent music up for distribution in 24 countries.

"In the last four years, we have built the largest roster of independent Latin music labels available in the industry," commented Kevin Arnold, IODA's founder and CEO. "Telefonica's commitment to independent music and video is opening up an enormous opportunity for labels to connect with their fans. We look forward to an exciting partnership."

IODA's success hasn't gone unnoticed by the big telcos and Internet service HostMySite.com: Managed Dedicated Linux Hosting + 24x7 Service & Support providers. IODA is the only independent music company to deal directly with Sprint (NYSE: S) Latest News about Sprint Nextel, having helped build mobile services into the company's third-largest revenue stream. Aventura, one of IODA's Latin music label partners, is having great success selling ringtones through Verizon Latest News about Verizon -- it holds four of the telco's top 15 ringtone spots across all genres. In the course of establishing its businesses in the UK, France and Spain, it has signed content distribution deals with France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) Latest News about France Telecom and Vodacom, as well as Telefonica.

Its ability to attract independent musicians and their labels worldwide and provide them the means to communicate with a vast network New HP LaserJet P4014n Printer Starting at $699 after $100 instant savings. of Web 2.0-enabled sites across a rapidly evolving value chain has also drawn attention and led to a profusion of other partnerships, from niche bloggers, podcasters and e-tail giants.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com, iTunes, eMusic, Napster and Rhapsody, as well as Sprint and T-Mobile Latest News about T-Mobile are all IODA business partners while music/social networking sites, including iMeem, Last.fm, Download.com, Pitchfork, RollingStone.com, Stereogum and Music for Robots are promotional partners.
Fast, Fluid and Targeted Marketing Power

Promonet -- a promotional network, as its name suggests -- is another key element of IODA's digital music network services. It affords independent musicians and labels the opportunity to leverage the marketing reach and power of 3,000 digital retailers, music sites, social networks, bloggers and other music talent spotters and trendsetters, explained spokesperson Jessica Hoffman.

"It also enables labels to maximize buzz and pre-sales by creating automated, online marketing campaigns that promote new and catalog releases and send 'PromoMessages' to influential members of the online music community," she elaborated.

"Blogs, podcasts, social networks, etc. can make a big difference in the success of any music release. For our labels, that means reaching out to this influential group through Promonet, be it for a pre-release of an album, follow-up to a launch, or to test the reaction to a new sound or artist.

"The sheer volume of sites that have the potential to build a label's fan base and drive sales would be overwhelming without it. Ultimately, Promonet makes it possible to have a robust online publicity effort that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive," Hoffman noted.
Playing a New, Different Tune

"Our philosophy is that the music business should be a global business, and it hasn't been. ... That goes for the majors as well: They're multinationals, but they really operate as separate entities. They're businesses with separate P/Ls (profit and loss statements), essentially competing against each other," Tim Mitchell, IODA's vice president of marketing, told the E-Commerce Times. In contrast, "we're facilitating a two-way flow of music into and out of the three European territories, and in that way, it really is a global company."

Building an automated, scalable digital content management E-Mail Marketing Software - Free Trial. Click Here. Latest News about content management distribution system that incorporates some complex logic related to business rules, distribution territories and rights management has been a critical element in IODA's success.

"We rely on a central technology infrastructure but when it comes to business relationships, we look to open offices with local partners that have credibility and local knowledge. That helps to get things up and running pretty quickly," Mitchell said. "Sometimes it's driven by a partnership that seems like it's going to work well; other times, the thing that drives it is the market: Different markets have adopted technology at different rates."

The straightforward way IODA approaches all aspects of its business and the transparency it provides them -- particularly when it comes to money flows -- is something of a breath of fresh air to industry participants that have become accustomed to murky financial aspects that have characterized the inside of the music business, the company has found.

"Everything's becoming above board, and that transparency is really important to us," Mitchell elaborated. "Oddly enough, the one thing that really blew people's minds -- we were coming at it from a very sophisticated [technological] level -- the predominant piece of feedback from labels was that we paid them every month. That's telling as to how opaque the music business is. There's a sea change in the business: transparency. If you're in technology business, transparency saves you money."

John Reese’s Traffic Secrets: A music industry perspective on internet marketing

2008-07-16T02:48:00.000+12:00

“Finally.

The time has come.

4+ years in the making.

A small fortune spent.

Thousands of tests conducted.

A valuable system made even better.

“Traffic Secrets 2.0″ gets officially released
today at Noon EST!

If you’re serious about making money
online and growing an online business
then this is the course for you.

And I’ll stake my reputation on this… this may
very well be one of the last traffic-generation
courses you’ll ever need to buy.”

So today is the launch of John Reese’s “Traffic Secrets 2” and it is a big event in internet marketing.

This should be a great post because not only can we learn from John Reese in regards to applying online promotion ideas from his amazing free video material . . .

. . . but we can reflect on how John was able to create such a huge buzz for his product in an already overhyped and oversaturated market.

I understand the reason a lot of musicians come to me is because they understand the importance of promoting themselves and engaging fans online, but they’re not really interested in learning and practicing “IM” or internet marketing themselves, they wanna do their music.

Which is cool, that gives me a job to do, especially as there seems to be so very few music industry people interested in IM.

Which seems pretty strange to me, I mean call me crazy but if you were say in the recording industry and you kinda figured your whole industry was shifting to a digital, web enabled environment and you were wondering how to make money . . .

You’d probably start by looking at people who were already making money in a digital web enabled environment.

And I don’t mean like bill gates. I mean like garden variety twenty something geeks with a handful of computer skills (who me? haha), who to which the idea of not having to leave their bedroom to make money appeals.

You see no one who is involved in IM is interested in the music business because these kids are just trying to make quick bucks and there are no quick bucks in music.

Quick bucks are in diets and porn and peddling get rich schemes, and don’t forget the cornerstone of IM, the ebook. And when people are focused on one thing such as making fast, easy money selling whatever they can online, they begin to get very good at it. And a whole economic ecosystem has sprung up to support those who either work full time as a professional or part time or as a hobby earning extra cash as an internet marketer, and the industry has become ever more streamlined.

And it’s true that a lot more people are interested in miraculous weight loss cures than they are your music, but given that people make so much money out of weight loss online and anything else you can think of probably with a lot less resources then you have - while you’re still thinking about how to quit your day job - kinda suggests there’s some things we can learn.

And so that’s what I’ve been doing. Watching and learning from the ways that marketing is carried out on the web for RESULTS.

As in money results.

And I don’t mean results for Bill gates or Radiohead or anyone who doesn’t need my help.

I mean for you, at the arse end of the music industry, in a sinking ship with the rest of us, working out how to turn a crust.

So you can focus on your music, and I will focus on getting you to the best place online to get paid for it.

Lets get back to John Reese’s traffic secrets. I think the thing about Traffic Secrets is that it’s done a radiohead. Or is it a led zep reunion? The point is, within the internet marketing and blogging world people are hyped up about his product.

People that are masters of hype are hyped. Why?

Well the whole point of this post was to highlight his Free videos.

He has 3 free videos totalling almost an hour of free material where he discusses several in depth online promotion strategies and techniques.

You should watch them because theyre great, they’ll teach you a lot . . .

But - If you want direct access to these free videos then you have to jump into our new artist community.

http://newmusicmarketing.com

It’s free to join, (currently the whole site is free but there’s not much happening just yet, early days – by August should be a different story)

So back to this massive launch campaign. The first thing I noticed when I heard about this was that a lot of top IM people were blogging about the free videos from their friend John.

What if you had a dozen top bands all telling their fans you had a new album coming out?

But it wasn’t just talking about the videos it was what they were saying. Needless to say the free videos were packed with info and insight, they were distinctly authentic and valuable in content. In fact its only in the last half of the last video he even starts talking about the product itself.

But it wasn’t just the content. These bloggers and IM gurus couldn’t stop talking about the quality of the presentation, as although video has been growing in IM for the last 18 months, the general consensus was that he had risen the bar in promotional videos for internet products with the standard of his presentation.

And this is what many of the marketers touched on: They were personally excited about the product.

What they had seen and been given free was of such high standard they couldn’t help but be connected with the product and feel confident about purchasing it.

And this is the world we’re now living in. In order to stand out, you have to demonstrate superior value in a way that is accessible before you even create the opportunity to realise significant revenue.

Interesting aside:

I saw an ad emblazoned “John Reese is a scammer and owes me $30,000” I clicked through to a sale page for . . .

Traffic secrets . . .

I guess that’s one way of advertising. I don’t see myself running a “Matt Turner is a scammer and Kurb ripped me off” campaign . . .

Sign up now! Kurb Online Music Management Clients are Getting $US250 Worth of Free Advertising

2008-07-04T17:06:00.000+12:00

Yes that’s right.

When I say that Kurb is an outfit preparing artists for the future, I seriously mean it.

When I’m talking to potential clients I always emphasize that it’s not just the technology we have access to or our experience in digital and web 2.0 strategies.

It’s not even just deep awareness of opportunities that are becoming a reality due to the digital revolution.

It’s that me and my team – yes, that’s a team now as we welcome Altaf on board who will be our new specialist Myspace and Youtube promotions person, which means more time for me to work one on one with artists developing strategy and Altaf being the man who executes said strategies on Myspace and Youtube.

But as I was saying – I was stressing the point that we are the ones who are online day in day out ready to jump on top of the opportunites that are opening up everywhere in the digital economy.

Kurb is the digital early bird getting the juiciest worms online.

That’s why I’m really excited to be offering our clients a free $US250 facebook pay-per-click ad campaign.

I’ve touched on pay per click advertising before with google adsense (for content providers) and adwords (for advertisers) and how it is the most effective form of advertising due to the way it can be targeted and that you only ever pay when someone actually clicks through the ad to your website. That is you only pay when your ad has been effective in getting someone interested and you can see why this is the future of advertising.

100% of my marketing budget (which is fairly modest given that I am afterall, a marketing expert) I spend on PPC.

I also insist when working with clients that although ppc marketing, when you use your head a bit, can be extremely effective, you need a bit of sales nous.

Getting a hundred people to come to your website is only going to be effective if you understand how to convert that attention into value, which maybe as simple as selling them something, or maybe building a relationship thats a bit more complex.

The point is that all kurb clients are getting the opportunity for $250 worth of free advertising.

Did you know that could equate to up to 2500 targeted clicks through to your website? And don’t forget this is Facebook so you’ve got the middle class 18-35 market nailed. Gee what if that turns into 250 new fans? Not bad at all!!!

Of course further good news is that technical clouds we’ve endured attempting to launch our brand new artist community seem to be clearing, we’ve got Altaf on board taking care of Myspace and Youtube, The http://newmusicmarketing/ site should be launching in Beta next week SO . . .

If I were you I would get an email off to me at kurbpromo@gmail.com so we can start discussing your online strategy, pronto!

Packages that have just now reopened for the first time in 6 weeks start at

US$500 for a full 3 month online campaign

While we still have an ultra special starter pack deal for New Zealanders @

NZ$400 for a basic 3 month digital coaching consultation period

And of course for those are hearing what I'm saying and understanding how important it is for artists to get involved now with the kind of stuff I'm talking about - creating a dedicated online promotions and revenue strategy - we're launching a new artist community for resources and tools at http://newmusicmarketing.

It'll be free for an initial trial period, and then be $US37 p/month from that point though I may consider a special $NZ37 rate for kiwi muso's.
If you are one of my clients expect an update in your email soon giving you instructions on how to grab your $250 worth of free facebook advertising, and an update on how things are getting moving again with our expanded staff and new artist community.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist 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.

Online promotion: Branding your music and image to engage fans

2008-06-30T18:17:00.001+12:00

Creating an attractive brand for your music is one of the most important marketing elements to help gain customers. A bland brand means no sales, and the wrong brand can be a disaster.

With a great brand that fits your music image perfectly, your music image can soar.

But what is a good brand? Is it a nice website? Is it the level of quality in your music? Is it just a catchy name?

It’s all that and more. It’s everything from the logo on your website (you do have a website, right?) to the design of your CD to the values your music conveys. Brand is the perceived value and quality of you as an entertainer.

When you’ve branded well, you’ve created a remarkable and distinct image. It’s memorable. It’s easy to recognize. People know exactly what they get if they're into you – before they even decide they are.

Your brand should capture:

The emotion people feel when they think of your music

What they achieve from being a fan of your music

The overall impression that your music projects

How to find the right brand for you

Capturing all of these impressions can seem daunting at first, but there are few tricks that make finding your brand a little easier. By answering some questions, you can gain direction towards a perfect fit:

What feeling do you want people to have when they think of your music?

Fill in the blank: A consumer thinking of your music should say, “Wow, these guys seem really….”

What type of personality do you have? (E.g. Fun, quiet, casual, dedicated, curious, whimsical, scientific, etc)

What values do you want your music to project?

The more you learn about what impressions you want to convey, what your business represents and who you are, the closer you come to building your brand.

A few examples...

Jessie produces and records her own electronic pop. She wants people to feel comfortable with her, not overwhelmed. She believes in helping other people and giving away lots of content so more fans can find out about her and enjoy her music. Jessie is a very friendly person, and she likes having fun. Her friends think she has lots of pizzaz too. Jessie wants to convey that high energy and fun-loving attitude to fans.

Jessie’s brand is: Energized, helpful, friendly, and fun.

Here’s another example:

Martha is an mature, experienced folk singer/songwriter. She likes intimate performances where she can connect people with the deep spiritual energy of her songs and playing. She’s a kind, warm, caring woman, and she’s always mothering people. She wants to provide meaningful an honest music, traditional, nostalgic and comforting and she loves for people to feel right at home at her gigs.

Martha’s brand is: Warm, comforting, welcoming and caring.

It’s all about emotion

Notice that much of building a brand has everything to do with emotion and very little to do with actual marketing. A good brand makes people feel something. It resonates with consumers on a deeper level beyond what they want to buy and the price they’re going to pay.

Think about some big-name business brands, like Apple, Toyota, or Campbell’s. When you think of one of the large brand-name corporations, what kind of feeling do you get? What do you think they stand for? What emotions do they convey? Every brand tries to represent a certain lifestyle or personality to resonate with targeted consumers.

And it works.

Once you’ve figured out your business identity and image, you can start creating marketing materials like a logo, a business card, and a website… All properly branded so you can achieve maximum success.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist 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

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo
http://www.twitter.com/mattnz

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Social Media and Your Music: Basics of Online Music Promotion part 4

2008-06-29T22:43:00.001+12:00

Alright it’s time to get on with our “getting your head around the online promotion” series.

In the first three parts we looked at the basics and getting prepared. We talked about being ready to be patient and work steadily, we talked about getting your stuff ready, and we talked about the importance of words.

Part 1 is here:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/in-digital-we-trust-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion/

And part 2 is here

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/are-you-ready-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion-part-2/

And part 3:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/getting-your-head-around-digital-music-promotion-part-3-not-so-much-âwhoâs-going-to-direct-our-videoâ-but-âwhoâs-going-to-write-our-blogâ/

Today we’re really kicking this thing off.

So we've got all our digital cotent ready - it’s time to get to some uploadin and some profile makin’.

Now you know I ALWAYS say your website is most important but that’s going to need some proper attention in a whole other post coming up, because you must dedicate serious attention to your website as a place for doing business in the future, so you have to go about it sensibly.

But kicking off your social media promotions and building your network is easy and something you can and should get started with straight away.

Now there are many different types of social network sites so what I am identifying are all those sites where you can create an online profile for you or your music outside of your own website – on somebody else’s website.

The sites I’m talking about today – and yes I mean myspace, facebook, youtube, etc. are social sites where large numbers of people are coming everyday to interact with content and each other, so it makes sense that you should give yourself the best opportunity you can to make this new media phenomenon work for you!

In one way you can think of these websites as channels – entertainment channels that you can participate in, just like your website is your own little channel, but when I’m talking about using these sites for promotion I often suggest these sites as “doorways” which lead back to your website where you’re much better placed to create more valuable interactions based on the attention and connection you can create amongst your audience there.

So what you’re doing here by joining and participating in these social media sites is opening up these channels, opening up these doorways back to your website by giving people are little taste and then gently guiding them towards a positive outcome – at first that will just simply be listening to the song and hearing the story of the musicians behind it, but then you will advance to providing value to a point that you can get an email address or you can succeed in encouraging visitors to download a song so they are at least taking something away from the interaction they’ve had with you.

Okay so setting up your profiles should be pretty straightforward because you’ve got everything ready:

Your mp3, your jpg, your video, your bio, so y’all just go ahead and upload them!

Myspace – artist sign up in the top right corner of the music section

Facebook – register as an individual, or a persona, then create a “facebook page”.

Twitter – generating heat. Do as I say.

Now you see this is why I’m so excited about the artist community is because inside the community I can have a full and fully updated exhaustive list of all the social sites that are worth using and what to consider when doing so.

You see some sites are only worth doing – or particularly worth doing – if there’s a certain vibe on the site for the style of music you do.

But all the big main ones should be covered, and I will also have plenty resources going into what to consider at each stage of developing each profile in relation to what platform you’re using.

Here’s my latest list of all the ones you should sign up for even if its just to make sure you get dibs on your user name or personalised URL.

Video: Youtube

Social Networking: Myspace, Facebook, Bebo,

Microblogging/Micronetworking: Twitter

Social Music sites: Last.fm, Reverbnation, Soundclick.com, mp3.com

Social Bookmarking: Stumbleupon

Socially organised information: Wikipedia, Squidoo

Blogs: Wordpress, Blogger

So signing up for all these sites will probably take a night or two, what’s it supposed to do?

Well it’s like this. You know that you have a website or at least that you should. It will most likely take a lot of hard work to build your website up . . . let me be straight up with you – like a year or something!

So let me mention it now unless it's not obvious - make sure your profile links back to your site!

But jumping on a social network site is you going to where there are already people hanging out cruising round looking to check something out and they’re probably not going to come across your music otherwise unless you are where they are.

But it’s just like any party, and the social web 2.0 is one big party. If you just stand there, no ones going to talk to you.

So first it’s going to help if you look the part. You did upload all that stuff didn’t you? The songs, the bio, the video, the pictures? It doesn’t matter if your profile isn’t all fancy because you’re going to look like a half ass if you don’t have everything looking like you’ve at least made an effort.

I’m going to have to keep the intricacies of profile presentation and specific techniques that we would use when working with clients on social accounts under wraps but I will stress –

This is web 2.0. And a social network is just like any party or gig, you can’t just stand there, you’ve got to get involved, you’ve got to participate alongside those that you naturally affiliate with.

Facebook is a classic example because it's not as easy to engage as on myspace so you’re best just to jump into the groups, jump into the forums, find where your communities are gathering on these sites.

Are they gathering around the profile of a similar higher profile artist?

Get in there! But you don’t just walk up and say “I’m in a band!!! Check us out!!!”

Come on! At least try and be cool about it. You know how to be cool don’t you?

Don’t say “please check out our music.”

If you don’t know anything about profiting from interactions then you’ve got to realise that on social networks it’s not about you.

Honestly. You’ve been to the parties, you don’t want to be that guy going

“Yeah new album, new video, got a tour coming up, yeah working on (me), doing (me) it’s a really amazing time (for me, me, me)

Web 2.0 is about them. It’s about the user. Whether they want to participate in what you’ve got to offer is up to them.

And this is the whole thing, the whole chain you begin when you use social networks as a way to interact with new fans, in order to draw them in you’ve got to engage with them on their level. You’ve got to make it valuable for them – or why should they care?

A lot of bands give their music away free now, it’s a reality. Just it being free is not remarkable in itself.

But the social network is often still the beginning of the mission, to draw them in from first contact, to get them to buy in enough to want to visit the website, sign up for the email, download the free song – that is everything because that is the beginning of the relationship between an artist and a fan.

Notice how I described visiting your site as a “buy in”. That’s because in digital entertainment attention is now the new economy, the relationship is the sale.

We can talk about social networking until the cows come how and surely in the

http://newmusicmarketing.com forum we will.

But next in the series is your website and building the artist-fan relationship into revenue there so lets get on to that!

.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist 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.

A Marketing Campaign Plan for an Online Music Service Launch

2008-06-29T04:01:00.001+12:00

Wow Matt I hear you’re getting ready to launch your new artist community.

That’s right. I’m launchin’ it good and proper!

I have to, my clients probably think I’ve bagged off with their cash and I’m hiding out in Zimbabwe til the heat dies down.

So you’re going to be doing a campaign, a launch campaign?

Sure. I’m pretty confident with my strategy so I’ll let you know how I ‘m going to be doing my launch campaign:

Firstly you got to remember the product I’ve created is strictly limited to 100 people so it’s kind of exclusive – y’know instead of just trying to sell heaps of little plastic discs you’ve got to think of new ways to bring value to people and what that’s worth.

With the new artist community I just wanted the value to be exceptional in addition to the fact it is still a scarce commodity and that’s the main marketing point – persuasive value.

That’s not to say I’m stupid enough to let the thing try and sell itself.

Wait. Consider this. What if you as a musician did what I’m doing and decided to charge $40 per month to complete access to your work?

Limiting it to 100 people would be silly wouldn’t it?

Maybe Charging $40 would be a bit steep?

I mean if you had 1000 people paying $10 p/month to download everything you have and continue to do, as well as getting to make chit chat with the illustrious artist . . . well I wouldn’t be complaining.

That’s only one way of making money from content!

Lets get back to my marketing plan:

Email: Emailing all the contacts I’ve built up and discussed online promotion with.

Yes it’s going to take a whole night to organise my email list but I’m pretty sure this will be a cracker just in itself. Contacting at least a couple of hundred people who I’ve discussed providing service for to tell them we have a new service available at $10 per week AND we’re bringing back the $100 p/month deal and it’s sweeter than ever.

Of course I know what I’m doing with this whole “creating value” thing so I’m just going to be inviting people to join for free at first.

So being that this is my main strategy you can see the value of having a large amount of email contacts who are identifiable as already having expressed a direct interest in my work and then respecting them enough to allow them to check it out at first without paying.

Blogging:

As I’ve already mentioned, expect plenty of posts like this, framing my new product.

If your product is good you should be able to talk about it and tell stories. Stories that engage, like this story I’m telling right now that sort of compares my online service launch to an online album launch campaign but its not an album is it because albums aren’t worth anything and no one wants them so you better figure out what it is that YOU’RE launching that people actually want to buy!

Myspace:

Yup we’ll give myspace a go. If there’s one audience still on myspace its other musicians. And I have a rule with myspace that I only do a campaign if I’m really promoting value.

Facebook, forums and online PR

Publicity is a dark art and I will be happy with some neat, short little posts around some of the relevant gather points online – a few facebook groups, forums, local music communities, that should do it.

I might consider an online press release or maybe I might save that for a second launch once I'm happy with the initial user testing.

I’m actually trying to keep it low key because I can see some people thinking I’m trying to act like a scammy guru selling my secrets or something when I’m just trying to develop a more effective system that addresses problems artists are having right now – cheaply - but I simply don’t have the capital to go . . . look! All done! $37 p/month, all your problems are solved!

Adwords

Adwords is . . a perfect system, as I’ve said, it’s the beginning of the future of advertising.

Often I have compared the power of digital promotion to the Death Star. Awesomely powerful, but only to be deployed in operations once every preparation has been made.

And a perfect system demands a perfect product. A perfect target.

It’s like this. Until we’ve learnt how to make 10 clicks into 1 sale, I don’t want you to pay $5 for 10 clicks. There’ll be plenty of time for pay per click, Google’s not going anywhere.

Video:

Gotta do a video. I’m a hypocrite if I cant just push record and tell people what I think I’m doing and I expect that’s something an artist should be able to do each week.

What I wont be doing:

poster campaign: There’s probably about a million committed music acts in the world.

Probably only about 50 walk around up town Auckland.

CD promo: I’d love to write a song for the launch and treat it like a faux single release. But I’ll be struggling just with a video.

Affiliate marketing: My goal is not to become some rich dude reaping in profits from my “system”, it’s actually because I believe I can create a system that puts the artist in control of their online promotion and revenue management, with all the support they need.

If I can make it work, or actually any way of making a new band famous that doesn’t involves a reality tv show I’m sure I’ll be fine for cash.

Mainstream media: Sure you gotta spend money to make money. But I'm not that stupid!

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

lon tail, flat tail, free tail: free the music already!

2008-06-29T01:27:00.002+12:00

The long tail is a term that describes the effect of a digital economy on the former impositions caused by actual physical retail stocks of products sucjh as books, CD's and DVD's that gave a lot of hope to the little guys in a new online marketplace.

But just recently there’s been more discussion – a Harvard Business Review article suggests the long tail won’t deliver a “music middle class” as described by hypebot:

http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/2007/10/the-rise-of-the.html

from http://www.coolfer.com

Anderson's theory of niche-over-mass culture is based upon the belief that the mere availability of niche products spells doom for hits. Given the choice, he argues throughout the book, people will make different purchases. Not only are CD sales down, he wrote, but customers are "losing their taste for the blockbuster hits."
But consumers, Elberse has found, still opt for hits:

No matter how I slice and dice the customer base, customers give lower ratings to obscure titles. A balanced picture emerges of the impact of online channels on market demand: Hit products remain dominant, even among consumers who venture deep into the tail. Hit products are also liked better than obscure products. It is a myth that obscure books, films, and songs are treasured.

In the book, Anderson wrote that "we're seeing a shift from mass culture to massively parallel culture," or "millions of microcultures." But that doesn't appear to be the case. Mass culture is alive and well on the Internet. Consumers know the bad from the good. They know what's popular and they will gravitate towards the hits. Niches will continue to exist, and heavy users will continue to dabble in niches, but the level playing field of digital distribution isn't going to do away with mass culture.

from http://digitalaudioinsider.blogspot.com

Elberse touches on one of my pet themes -- that the ease of online distribution for virtually any piece of recorded music is resulting in increasingly fierce competition for the attention (and dollars) of listeners -- and provides some stats that spell out the improbability of meaningful digital sales for most "long tail" musicians:

“My research suggests that the tail is long and flat, and therefore that content providers will find it hard to profit much from it. It remains to be seen whether the new media environment will indeed make many previously unprofitable niche products profitable. Online channels lower the barriers to market entry for such products, and thus introduce the possibility of additional sales -- but they also lead to a flood of products all competing for consumers' attention. In my most recent correspondence with managers at Nielsen SoundScan, I learned that of the 3.9 million digital tracks sold in 2007 (the large majority for 99 cents each through Apple iTunes), an astonishing 24% sold only one copy, and 91% -- 3.6 million tracks -- sold fewer than 100 copies.”

But over http://www.mediafuturist.com

A post quoting the Long Tail's Chris Anderson on Prince’s little experiment with the daily mail is used to once again highlight – forget the flat tail, it'a all about the free tail!

“He says: "A) Prince spurred ticket sales. Strictly speaking, the artist lost money on the deal. He charged the Daily Mail a licensing fee of 36 cents a disc rather than his customary $2. But he more than made up the difference in ticket sales. The Purple One sold out 21 shows at London's 02 Arena in August, bringing him record concert revenue for the region. B) The Daily Mail boosted its brand. The freebie bumped up the newspaper's circulation 20 percent that day. That brought in extra revenue, but not enough to cover expenses. Still, Daily Mail execs consider the giveaway a success. Managing editor Stephen Miron says the gimmick worked editorially and financially: "Because we're pioneers, advertisers want to be with us..."

My own commentary is that we all know a single track is no longer worth 99c, I think it’s time for the acceptance that recorded music is inevitably moving toward free and that that should inform the discussions on what our best efforts to realise the value created by music and musicians will lie in the not too distant future.

My feelings are that we are in a era of great opportunity for artists and we should reflect on where else creating value online and with digital products, services and partnerships has been already proven to be significantly profitable for creators, and the “free tail” methods being used to do so.

Online Music Promotion Management: When Experiencing Technical Difficulties

2008-06-28T22:23:00.001+12:00

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.

The technicalities of building a solid platform for digital promotion and revenue is something I’ve spoken about before, because the harder it is for me, the harder it must certainly be for artists to do stuff like create and host a site, install and administer a blog platform, create a podcast and all the rest.

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.

When radiohead released “In Rainbows” online. Media frenzy, 3 million hits on their website in one day. Went down like the Hindenburg because they weren't ready for the traffic.

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.

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Your Signature is a Great Web 2.0 Promotion Tool

2008-06-28T03:25:00.000+12:00

In my last post here I was reviewing a musician’s blog and talking about how using a signature or a footer can be a really effective way of prompting people to take further action on visiting your blog, and of course email, forums, and other online communications.

Blogs and other forms of social media are driven by users generating content and drawing other users who find it and put value in it toward that content. This is called “pull” marketing and it mainly applies to the internets ability to draw other people toward you who are interested in what you have to say and perhaps, what you have to sell also - as long as they know that much!

But executing sophisticated online promotion is not treating people as if they’re stupid and trying to hard sell them on some product or service - it’s giving them a story, giving them a taste and putting something out there for them, then leveraging the attention created by your free content to be able to make them aware of the next proposition - the next event in the chain which leads to you as the artist getting paid.

This is why using a signature that you attach to your blogs, forum posts, messages, emails, comments etc. wherever appropriate can be an effective way of introducing your proposition to an audience without being seen to be using blunt traditional hard sell marketing.

I can blog about what ever I please, but that’s not going to stop me slipping in the fact that I do the cheapest DVD duplication in Auckland and New Zealand.

Of course you know I do heaps of stuff other than dvd duplication but you see I’m really focusing in on the dvd printing and dvd duplication because that’s where I create the most value, and the value is passed on to my clients in savings and to me in increased profitability.

Similarly, you might decide to follow my advice and just focus strongly on building up your email contact list as the first step of your online promotion efforts. So rather than being all like “We’re a band from blah blah and we make music that sounds like blah blah blah . . .”

You go straight for the throat all

DON’T MISS OUT! EXCLUSIVE FREE MP3 GIVEAWAY LIMITED TIME LIMITED EDITION – ENTER YOUR EMAIL NOW TO RECEIVE YOUR FREE GIFT!

DISCOVER NOW WHY THEY CALL THIS MAN MADAGASCAR’S MOST EXPLOSIVE NEW NOSE FLUTE TALENT. PLEASE ACCEPT THIS SONG AS AN OFFERING IN SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE WHO SUPPORT THE ENDANGERED MADAGASCAN POLAR BEAR

Or something like that.

Maybe you'd be a little more subtle but the point is you they're not going to know about this whole free mp3 when you join the mailing list thing if you don't take ample opportunity to mention it.

So I stopped including my footer/signature/"link family" ad thing at the beginning and end of each blog – mainly for my own sanity because I was actually trying to tone down my marketing to take the opportunity to improve the efficiency of my operation here at kurb – the result of that of course being a new artist community I am launching soon at

http://www.newmusicmarketing.com/

Also don’t forget this blog is also getting settled into it’s new home at

http://www.musicmarketingblog.info/

Now I'd like to point out that a really professional footer ad or signature thing would probably have a little graphic going on, the links are the most important as always, but ultimately I'd like to be using a lot more panels and banners that give off a snazzy visual vibe.

Okay so lets look at what I WAS working with:

Kurb is a media promotions company providing a regular blog on digital music promotion, marketing digital content and creating revenue from new media online.

Kurb also provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally And the best value fast turnover physical media services in New Zealand including CD / DVD printing and duplication and poster services.

Our physical media services come with free graphic set up and support, free delivery, and free promotions advice and support for musicians.

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo -
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.squidoo.com/kurb

All the best with your project, from Kurb
For direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromo

DIGITAL COACHING AND ONLINE MANAGEMENT STARTS @ $NZ250 P/MONTH P/ACT

Oh no no.

Okay there's quite a bit wrong with that. First, obviously it's way too long, it just drags!!! And it's mainly too long because it's stuffed with stupidly useless anchor text especially this:

blog on digital music promotion, marketing digital content and creating revenue from new media online.

stupid. Pick a few keywords - sensible keywords - and stick with them!

As a musician that’s going to be your genre affiliations, your region, any appropriate subcultural or genre based reference points and maybe a handful of key acts that represent the concept of your sound. Narrow at down to the most important niche terms, defining your target, defining your niche.

And this is on the terms of your audience! Do you know anyone other than me who talks about free mp3's as “digital content” in everyday conversation? No. So say "free mp3's".

And all those links are just too much. Sure have links but remember its always about attempting to create value so provide links that create value – provide links to the good stuff, not just everything that could possibly matter.

Let’s have another go

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

Okay now that's better.

Blog review: Discussing an artist's blog.

2008-06-27T18:38:00.002+12:00

Okay while we’re bloggasminginging lets start catching up with some of those posts I promised last week.

First we’ve got our very first Kurb blog review!!! I was doing some posters for Tono’s tour and went by his site blog at

http://www.tono.co.nz

I actually got a good vibe off his blog it took me a couple of hours to realise it was definitely worth posting about the examples of what he’s doing right.

Great design – he’s got a wordpress blog and he’s using it as his whole site as I described in a past post, because that’s how awesome wordpress platforms are.

Also looks really professional, looks like he takes himself seriously as an artist and to me that says the music is likely to be of a standard also.

When you’re used to seeing a lot of blogs like I have – its like myspace – you get real sick real fast of seeing the same old busy cluttered blog designs, and if you’re trying to implement a marketing strategy where getting traffic through the blog is part of a chain of events that will lead to leads and sales then you got to have clear focus on desired reader outcomes such as

SIGN UP FOR OUT MAILING LIST AND DOWNLOAD AN EXCLUSIVE FREE MP3!!!!

Tono’s using a classic blogger technique of making “flagship content” readily available - via a little dashboard that lights up in orange when you mouse over. That means it doesn’t matter how people end up on his site it’s easy to get to that page where you can find out all the basic information, extra content and back story about what this blog is and is all about without getting frustrated, bewildered and heading off because the ramblings have no context.

This is the thing I particularly find with blogs is that you never know how or why someone will find you and what page they will land on.

That’s why when I talked about bloggasming and wild unhinged blogging in my last post, well, that’s okay when you’re starting out because weird crazy posts are going to bring in visitors who are searching for weird crazy things if you know what I mean.

And I also talked about bad blogging habits like going off on a tangent which is quite ironic.

Back to Tono’s blog.

Tono’s blog also has a great voice, great narrative and storytelling – There’s a narrative, there’s stories coming through in Tono’s blogs. As a marketer we get drilled about stories. What are stories? Stories connect us to the person telling them.

There’s great examples, Tono reports on his tour describing venues, support acts etc. but he also reports on incidental events such as his journeys from place to place as he goes. There’s also associated content and themes which is something I encourage all my clients to do – connecting with themes outside of music. Tono’s got a number of reoccurring themes in his blog including some overt discussions on green politics.

You see it’s not about being safe and broad any more. You’re not going to sell a million records. You want to be connecting with that proportion of the population who are going to respond positively to your message on a number of levels. Where choice is so prevalent, you’ve got to go for a deeper connection with people than just having cool songs.

But now there’s one big issue I have with Tono’s blog and this is the kind of second tier optimisation that you start to recognise once you’ve got the basics right.

You see Tono has got the basics right and his blog looks lovely and it’s behaving as a proper blog should. But lets go back to the outcomes that I touched on before.

What are we trying to achieve here? Basically we’re trying to sink our hooks in by making a memorable impression and hopefully leaving the visitor with as much to take away as possible.

So there is a very high chance that the high proportion of casual visitors to Tono’s site are going to put 2 and 2 together like I did and realise Tono is a musician.

Instantly it begs the question. What does Tono’s music sound like? We need to hear this music immediately before we lose interest in a split second and decide to do something else.

Tono’s got a player there, but I just don’t think that’s enough! People got to know that they must check out this music!

It’s the most important thing

It reminds me of one other really important thing I really want to mention. Remember when I used to put my “link family” in every blog post? Most top bloggers – in fact most bloggers worth their salt full stop – will have some kind of signature or panel or banner or SOMETHING in each post that gemerally advertises the bloggers own products or services.

The big money bloggers will often have a free thing they are giving away, most usually an ebook, if you sign up to their email list. Sound familiar?

That little signature/footer thingee is a prime example of an area where you will be endlessly tweaking, just coming back every few weeks and saying . . .

In fact lets do a new one for me right now. Coming up next post.

What’s a Bloggasm? On blogging, creative thinking and marketing

2008-06-27T00:58:00.000+12:00

Are you having another bloggasm, Matt?

Yes, that’s right.

Maybe it’s trouble adjusting to shifting the blog to: http://www.musicmarketingblog.info

But I will continue to post on both blogs for now.

Well what IS a bloggasm, anyway? Well it’s really a word I thought of, then I figured it could have a meaning. I guess a bloggasm is when you just start blogging uncontrollably.

Really? Can this be healthy?

Well in marketing as well as the performing arts we are most successful when we engage the audience, when we look for ways to make things more enjoyable and useful for those who choose to participate.

This is particularly true of blogging.

People who are the most successful at leveraging their blogs for marketing and revenue have adeptly attuned their blogs to their audiences to maximise income and exposure, but these are professional bloggers who have been building their blogs for sometimes as long as five years or more.

The tone of this blog recently has been very much about learning from top bloggers, top internet marketers and people who already make lots of money online about what they can teach musicians and other similarly creative artists about creating the kind of value online that leads to a full time income.

But the point I’m making by having a little bloggasm over here is that at for me, personally, my blog is not JUST about creating a voice for my brand, it’s not just about marketing.

Last week I was blogging quite vigourously, and getting some really great ideas going! But I also had a record week for visitors. I didn’t quite break the 1000 mark, but I did earn a sum total of $US5.06 from advertising on my blogs on one of the days over the last week, which was another record.

So for the first time I started to anticipate that my blog would begin to play a larger part in sales and marketing as it grew, and that where I the past I used my website and my myspace to generate most of my business, very soon it would be my blog bringing me the business where myspace has fallen off.

So I guess what I’m saying is that if like me, you’re committed to growing your income from the digital music business, when that happens it’s not going to be cool for to just post whatever you like, say whatever you like, or just start bloggasming out and doing multiple posts that lurch from subject to subject, and talking way too much about your own little crusades that your readers really couldn’t give a rat’s arse about. Like I do.

I probably won’t be able to post about rat’s arse’s or tag those posts under the subject: “rats arse” either.

So what can I say, but blog irresponsibly while your blog is young and you have the chance! haha

No, I mean find your voice. Find the voice in your writing that wants to blog every day.

Don’t be afraid to have ideas! Don’t be afraid to use your blog to ask questions to which you don’t know the answer, to seek opinions and to create an open ended discussion, don’t be afraid to have passion!

This is what is making blogging much more than just people writing a diary on the computer that everyone can see.

I figured it’s better that I experiment now, keep writing, keep ranting, keep the passion running high doing it the way I want while most crucially continuing to build up the amount of content on my blog. That way I can keep moving forward with innovative ideas, and draw people who are interested in those ideas toward me and the conversations happening here and basically bloggasm all I like.

Because when I do start to get thousands of weekly visitors and having a bloggasm and just blogging about whatever I feel like blogging about and being sloppy about it . . . will not keep growing my long term success.

The last superstar? 21st century music promotion with Lil Wayne

2008-06-20T15:11:00.003+12:00

I just had to look into this situation with Lil Wayne when I heard he had sold a million records in his first week.

I’m pretty sure he could be the only artist to have achieved this in the last year or so.

Not kanye, not fitty.

This could make Lil Wayne the last superstar. He may be the last artist to ever sell a million albums in a week - remember the biggest selling album of 2007 was Josh Groban's Christmas album, Noel which sold 3.6 million albums IN TOTAL, selling 670,000 copies per week at it's peak.

My interest in the charts is purely professional so I didn’t know a lot about Lil Wayne except of course his notorious mixtape sessions.

Checking out his new single “Lollipop” which no doubt is being thrashed around the world right now and is the track of choice for drunken middle class 17 year olds I didn’t see or hear anything remarkable when say held against something similarly huge such as 50 cents smash hit debut “In Da Club”

But of course you probably haven’t heard this song, and you may not have heard the recent collaboration between Timbaland and One Republic “Apologize” which was the most played radio song ever.

Because that’s the way the internet and new media works. If in the 21st century, you don’t care, then you don’t have to. Remember with the internet there's always another channel where somethjing better is on.

I mean - Heard Madonna’s new album? Well actually . . . no one cares. I used to love “get into the groove” when I was a little kid!!! Lets hear that one again. And I think that's how people feel.

I won’t go into too much I’ll just make some points:

- Lil Wayne was a gifted student who went to a special learning school. At 11 he was picked up by a mentor and released his first album at 15. His first solo album in 1999 at the age of 17 was a massive success in Hip Hop.

- Lil Wayne has been largely known since then for his prolific mixtape series of improvised recordings that have been distributed widely over then net through filesharing. As the DJ mixtape tradition is somewhat dubious in the face of traditional copyright law, there was no way he could have profitted dramatically from this phenomenon anyway.

- In 2003 Lil Wayne guested on a Destiny’s Child track “Soldier” that was #1 hit in the US and several other countries. From that point Lil Wayne began a prolific period of guest appearances in 2006 alone he guest featured on 87 tracks.

So what we’re saying here is that although his 2002 and 2005 albums were relatively unsuccessful, selling less than a million copies of each while taking 3 years to complete, the phenomenal exposure he has got on the internet through creating access to large amounts of free music and the exposure he's got from mainstream media piggybacking on every opening to maintain his presence with new content has seen him set himself up to be the only artist on the planet who we can be sure could sell a million records in a week in 2008.

What has Lil Wayne done thats different? Whether he's "worked harder" than other artists is not the point - it's that in a changing market he has adapted by presenting a LOT more content than would otherwise be expected of a top selling artist - maybe only 3 official albums in 9 years but hundreds of featured appearances and dozens of unofficial full length recordings.

ALSO musically, Lil Wayne has leverage the key skill that he does possess - improvised raps or "freestyles" and has flown in the face of traditional copyright to create something of value for fans and although he was unable to profit directly, the profit came when the fans rewarded him by buying a million of his albums.

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”

2008-06-19T17:02:00.002+12:00

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

Part 1 is here:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/in-digital-we-trust-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion/

And part 2 is here

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/are-you-ready-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion-part-2/

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

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

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

digital music marketing online

Online digital music marketing
online management marketing promotion

Artist promotion marketing and management
digital online promotion music marketing

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.

Are you ready? Getting your head around the internet, digital music marketing and online promotion part 2

2008-06-17T17:51:00.000+12:00

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

Part 1 is here:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/in-digital-we-trust-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion/

because we’re gearing up for two big events:

The launch of kurbs new music marketing community @ http://newmusicmarketing.com/

And my very first presentation working with http://www.depotartspace.co.nz/ in devonport.

Jason there is going to be organising a seminar for local musicians covering

- album launch
- tour promotion
- digital strategies (thats me!)

So if you’re in Auckland in late July this should be an awesome opportunity to sponge up vital industry knowledge and hopefully I will get a biscuit.

Don’t forget we’re shifting to http://musicmarketingblog.info/ any day now!!!

Now last blog I talked about facing the reality of digital music promotion.

It is confusing and complex and it is the future. It is also a lot of work.

To me it’s honestly a lot less work because I don’t have to leave the house. You may have not have played as many demoralising gigs in your life to less than 12 people as I have though.

The http://newmusicmarketing.com forum that we’re launching soon is designed so that you can be informed and instructed on the most effective techniques in online promotion and internet marketing. You can begin your campaign by carrying out the tasks yourself at minimum cost and you can decide where you want to take your campaign on your own watch.

It’s hard to start working with an artist and tell them theyre 6 months away from seeing a cent online and you'll drop a grand in my pocket before you get there. But that’s reality, it’s better to get the artist or their manager or their mum or little sister in the forum, learning the basic and most importantly carrying out the tasks, carrying out the maintenance, getting on track.

Playing that gig might work. Sending in that demo, getting that interview, going for that grant, entering that competition – it might work! Might.

But building your website is the most solid promotion strategy you can engage in! The amount of people engaging online is not going to stop growing and the laws of almighty Google are not going to alter fundamentally. If they buy your actual real CD this week . . . theyre not going to want to buy it again next week and definately not on the other side of the world in Sweden, where they love that kind of thing that you do.

You have got to start thinking like it already 2010 and your website is your sovereign media territory where you control the environment. It is your channel and it is your community it is your retail outlet . . . it pays you money.

Myspace and Wordpress and Facebook have built these platforms so that they can generate massive profits from the attention artists and users are creating. People like me and you!

I read it the other day. Myspace has made $11-12 out of each person who has used it. Google has made an average of $66 out of each person who has used their service.

Now you listen to me, sunshine!

This is not about saying “using your myspace as your website is unprofessional” - this is the next level!

It’s about digital ownership of value created through access and attention. Now do you want to give all your money to myspace or do you want to start trying to figure how it is that myspace made $11 out of you when you never even paid for anything . . . and how you could learn to do something like that on your website?

But you gotta build a boat before you can sail it.

It’s like I’m going to tell you how to build your boat and I’ll have some guys around to help out, and after a few months we’ll see how you’re going to see if you’re ready to sail. And then when you’re sailing fine we’ll fit it out with a motor.

I’m not just going to hand you the motor, point at the sea and say, “go promote your content.”

Okay now lets take the elevator to the basement. Lets go back to the start.

Your first tasks are pretty basic. They don’t involve me.

If you’re not particularly skilled in music then you should be at least pretty young an eager, or exceptionally physically attractive or have some other comedic or theatric appeal. Or as we’ve seen more recently with The Gorillaz and Crazy Frog, maybe you’re just really good at cartoons or CGI.

Then you need to create digital content, because I cant help you at all until you do. You need to record your music so it can be converted to mp3, but not only that, almost equally important now, is that you must have an associated image, preferably a photo of you that can be converted into a .jpg, and you should be able to record 60 seconds of video for youtube at least introducing yourself to people who want to meet you.

I’m struggling with this too people, but we’ve got to understand we are living in the 21^st century and talking to the camera is not something that you should be making a big deal about. You maybe choose your favourite top, do a quick check in the mirror, you make sure the light is half decent, you push record, you be yourself. It’s not that hard.

Okay we’re ready to start your online promotion campaign!!!!

Tune in next time where we talk about starting an actual promotion campaign on the internet to make more people know about a musician and for the musician to start making money from it!!!!!

In digital we trust: Getting your head around the internet, digital music marketing and online promotion

2008-06-17T16:12:00.000+12:00

This is part one of a series on basic basics gearing up for two big events:

The launch of kurbs new music marketing community @ http://newmusicmarketing.com

And my very first presentation working with http://www.depotartspace.co.nz/ in devonport.

Jason there is going to be organising a seminar for local musicians covering

- album launch
- tour promotion
- digital strategies (thats me!)

So if you're in Auckland in late July this should be an awesome opportunity to sponge up vital industry knowledge and hopefully I will get a biscuit.

I am not planning on showing you how to set up a myspace account. I'm not going to be talking about what you would do if you already had as much money behind you as people who have already made it do. To me, a digital strategy is a strategy to go to part time hours in your day job or get off the benefit within 12 months.

Glamourous huh? OK lets go!

Don't forget we're shifting to http://musicmarketingblog.info any day now!!!

Remember, marketing is all about delivering products and services that are solutions to peoples problems.

Now that my blog has become a half decent platform, I can start using it to draw in certain targets through the content I provide. Those targets of course being the ones who have the most to gain from the value I provide. I mean it’s nice to have a community. It’s nicer to have a community that gives you money for fixing their problems.

And needing an effective digital music promotions strategy in place that they can afford in the months before it provides even a hint of income is a massive problem for many artists.

If you end up signing up for the new http://newmusicmarketing.com forum when it launches soon - I’ll be able to reveal many effective techniques that I wouldn’t otherwise share because its too valuable and it takes so long to explain why and how it works!

In the new Kurb private music marketing forum, I won’t just be explaining the idea behind things that work, I’ll actually just give out step by step instructions to follow, so you can just get it done with minimum hassle and brain numbing internet marketing talk.

Just late last week I sent out a task for my clients while theyre waiting around on the new forum – I carried out the rather lengthy task too and have been really happy with the result. Sure it was several hours of long and boring work. But romance aside, I had a lot more fun that night than some of the worst gigs I’ve ever played.

When it comes to the deepest levels of what I do, once all the long boring internet marketing stuff is done – it really does just come down to engaging the fan. And this is how we do it. By providing access to content that draws the prospect into the value, that makes them want more value.

So a lot of the stuff I’m going to be writing here for awhile is going to be directed towards those for whom the new http://newmusicmarketing.com music promotion community will be of most value – those who know enough about needing to promote online but are totally confused by it - because these concepts ARE complex.

The digital revolution is turning everything on it’s head and it’s a whole new world online. I’ve been learning this stuff for years, it’s no wonder artists are so confused!

The http://newmusicmarketing.com community recognises yes, it is work carrying out online promotion tasks but the craziest thing about web promotion is getting your head around how it works and knowing what to do, where to start, where to focus.

It’s a bit like music itself. You don’t have to know how to read and write music to make great music. You don’t have to have me explain everything about internet marketing for it to work for it. Obviously you would get a lot of benefit out of it, but it is a time vs. benefit equation, and you’ve got more hit songs, blogs and video updates to do, haven’t you?

See, I don’t think musicians want to be worrying about online promotion, they just want to get it done. Artists have enough on their plate writing great music, making meaningful artistic statements that resonate, looking cool, being cool, and interacting with their fans in a meaningful way

Do you think when you’ve made it, you’re going to be interested in building SEO backlinking strategies, administering mailing lists, optimizing ad revenue, keeping two dozen odd social and distribution avenues updated and all the rest.

Hosting on a dedicated server? Domain names? Podcasts? Blog administration – back ups and spam protection . . .

You don’t even want to have to think about it. That’s why we’re here. When you’ve made it, you’re going to pay me well and it won’t even be discussed until there’s a problem.

But until then - you don’t have to worry about how and why it works. Absorb what you can and carry out my instructions and you will have an internet campaign happening that you can afford. And when you've seen the results and you're ready to lift it to the next level and quit doing all the boring stuff yourself, we'll be there to take you up to the next level with your online promotion campaign.

I don’t promise to make anyone a star. The reality is there may not be stars anymore, just muso’s who can pay their mortgage, and that’s what I’m trying to create.

The thing is you’ve got to remember that now music is going digital, you’ve got a chance to make it that you never had before. But so has everybody else, which as it turns out, is probably just as much work as it used to be.

Now the next blog is going to introduce more fundamental theory and practice on what to know when initiating your online campaign.

New Music Marketing for band / artist / music managers

2008-06-15T14:20:00.000+12:00

Even though in a lot of ways I’ve been driven by the ideal of totally and completely trimming the fat and providing a digital service that delivers an artists complete business needs, for those of you who have reached the point of needing a manager, surviving without one is completely idealistic.

The ideal is of course that when an artist can keep the greater part of the revenue produced from creating something that costs next to nothing to replicate and distribute (ie an mp3) it’s quite sound economically.

But the beautiful thing about the new music marketing forum is that it actually empowers managers. It empowers all those kids who are managing their friends band to stump up the $40 p/month and learn not only what they ought to do as a manager but exactly how to implement cutting edge online promotion.

Why the forum will work for musicians as well as industry people such as managers and others dealing with music related services and products is that although we will provide detailed information and support response in regards to carrying out an effective long term online campaign, we won’t do it for you unless you get really stuck, and that’s the value you can pass out to the artists you handle in a management role.
I can’t believe in this forum I’ll be giving up some of my most valuable secrets such as how I make cd’s and dvd’s so damn cheap.
I run a poster company for people who want to have posters go up for their gigs and such. Why you would waste all that money and paper and ink in such a thing I don’t know. Posters are for bedroom walls and record stores and cafes where they can be treated with respect, not out in the cold street at the mercy of fate!
The next step on from what I’m doing is basically developing a software program that manages and promotes bands.
Imagine a live database of venues in key cities. The artist selects the venue, sends the request to us, and we skype the venue to outline the bands request to perform at the venue.

Okay before we get to idealistic
Just two thoughts on marketing and sales for my competitors and contemporaries providing services and products for professional musicans –

Search

the sooner you establish the most rudimentary website and blog the sooner you’ll start building search authority there. Google is responsible for about 70% of my prospects. It’s not enough to have bought a domain, you want to get it pointed somewhere asap.

Digital products

Digital products add value in ways that are scaleable and have a global reach. Although management services, recording studios and practice rooms are not digital products, a blog is, and even if it cant be monetized, you can leverage it for marketing purposes.

High growth in digital video will have to wait until we get better broadband in this country.

Thoughts on artist management

2008-06-14T15:02:00.001+12:00

From Bob Lefsetz @ http://www.lefsetz.com

Christina Aguilera needed a protector, someone who would allow her to follow her own vision, she signed with Irving Azoff.

Phish was a band up from the streets, er, frat house floor, they ended up being managed by John Paluska.

Would Phish have been better off with Azoff? Would Aguilera have been better off with Paluska? No. Each had the perfect manager. Which one do YOU need?

By time Irving got ahold of her, Christina Aguilera was already a star. But it appeared her career was being run by her label. She wanted to call her own shots, she needed a buffer between her and her record company. Also, someone connected enough that they knew all the players and were owed big time favors. Is there an awards show Christina DOESN’T play?

Phish needed to belong to the people, not the system. They needed someone who could build them from the ground up. Their game was the road, not discs. They liked to improvise, it was about the concert experience. If they had played an awards show early in their career it would have killed them.

In other words, you don’t need the heavyweight, well-connected manager to make it. Unless you’re playing the traditional radio/TV hit single game.

If you’re playing the old wave game, sign with someone who’s got the chops, who knows the ropes, who isn’t reinventing the wheel so much as applying what they know to your situation. You might grow, but your handler, he already knows the game.

Whereas if you’re not signed to a major label, don’t want to get signed to a major label, don’t make Top Forty singles, then you don’t need a manager connected so much as one who is savvy and HUNGRY!

The established management players are akin to mini-conglomerates, they’re the new labels. They want to get paid, right away. If you’re not delivering cash, if they sign you, you’re not getting much attention. Or, you’re getting attention from the untested newbie. If that newbie is truly great, break off and do it yourself, as Irving Azoff did with the Eagles. Otherwise, you’re probably going to get lost in the shuffle.

If you’re starting from ground zero, no name manager will probably be interested. But that won’t hurt you.

What do you need most if you’re a developing act?

Gigs. You need someone to get on the horn, go down to the venue, and cajole and connive ’til they get you a shot. Then you must deliver, but it’s the manager that creates/midwives the opportunity.

Where are you going to find such a bloke?

Look around you, he’s probably already a friend. Or that dude who comes to each and every show and hangs backstage and won’t leave until you do. THAT’S your manager.

Oh, don’t throw out your instincts. After all, Paluska went to Amherst, he’s no dummy. But find someone committed who will do the job for you.

So much of what Phish did, they did first. Or their spin on an event made it unique. They did their destination festivals. They released live albums of their shows, and then downloads. Elektra didn’t deliver these, rather their manager and agent, Chip Hooper, did.

Yup, Chip saw the numbers, he wanted to represent Phish. He didn’t care about record sales, but TICKET COUNTS! Most agents feel the same way today, but fifteen years ago, the focus was on the label.

Yes, after you get your manager, and he gets you gigs, he tries to get you an agent. And the agent you want is not the one with the name, the one who wines and dines you so much as the one who BELIEVES in you.

As for music… In today’s market, you’ve got to allow recording and trading, you’ve got to give the music away for free, you’ve got to let the seed grow into a tree. If you can’t get significant airplay, THIS IS THE ONLY WAY!

It’s not the way of the major label, and not the way of the old line manager. But it’s your way. You know the Net, you’ve got friends, both online and offline. You have to create something incredible and give your peeps the tools to spread the word. Not through fake incentives, you’ve got to trade purely on their belief, your honesty.

It’s all about the music when you’re doing it yourself. Everything must be subservient to the music. And you must create the best situation to experience the music.

When Phish played the Santa Monica Civic ten plus years ago, the police frisked the attendees. Paluska vowed to never play the building again, and his band DIDN’T! He didn’t shrug his shoulders and say he couldn’t do anything, that it wasn’t his fault, he took matters into his own hands, to defend his band’s relationship with its audience.

And when Phish started selling its music online, it offered FLAC files, so its fans could own the best sounding versions. Isn’t it funny that EMI is offering 256 kbps AACs supposedly sometime in the near future when Phish sold CD quality YEARS AGO!

So don’t lament that the manager with the name isn’t interested in you. There’s a good chance he might not be right for you.

Inexperience is no longer the handicap it used to be. Drive and appreciation of the band/fan relationship are paramount for today’s touring acts. That’s more about instinct than big time experience. Furthermore, you want someone who can develop on the fly.

Maybe you outgrow your manager, you end up signing with one of the big boys, who wrings out every last dollar for you.

Or maybe you stay with your guy, who delivers for you.

Or maybe your guy makes a deal with Irving, and uses Frontline’s power to get you what you want and need.

It’s a new game. It’s the sixties all over again. The wheel is being reinvented. Don’t be hamstrung by the old wave players and the old wave rules.

Making money online with your music

2008-06-14T15:01:00.000+12:00

...There is an even bigger philosophical question—why does a hobbyist "deserve" a break in the first place? The most common argument is that big media do not play indie music, and indie artists and labels would receive free promotion they otherwise would not receive. While I wish this were true, I am just not as convinced as others that this type of promotional webcasting greatly benefits artists or labels.

There may be some anecdotal evidence that some listeners "find" new artists and then "buy" the music. But I think the point is way overblown. I am more inclined to believe—based on the experience of my artist and indie label clients—that some listeners "find" new music and then, more often than not, illegally download the music.
Think about what you just said for a moment: Following that logic, the U.S. recording industry might just as well turn off the lights and go home!

Why? Because you're implying that no matter what you do—get people excited about music again, get stellar reviews in the press for a great new band, showcase an artist on Letterman and Leno—there's no point to it, because the people who learn to like an artist's work are simply going to illegally download it.

I think that sums the essential malaise of the record industry, Jay. It seems to me—and to friends of mine who've left the major labels in recent years—that the music industry has given up on trying to sell music, and is just trying to legislate and sue its way into protecting whatever cash it can as it fades into its demise.

But it doesn't have to be that way! Let me suggest six ways the music industry could take advantage of the growth in webcasting—and other related technological developments—to maximize its health.

(First, though, I would like to circle back to your above quote for a moment. When I discovered an artist named Bruce Springsteen back in 1973, I lived in a dorm where there were more copies of Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. dubbed onto TDK SA-90 audio cassettes floating around than there were actual copies of the LP. In other words, as you say above, "more often than not" people had an "illegal" copy. But records still sold! In fact, it was thanks to the illegal copies that Springsteen gained new fans who later went on to buy actual legal copies of his future releases! If you think about this from a lawyer's perspective instead of a marketer's perspective, things go haywire, because your instincts are to try to stop the dubbing, but if you succeed, you're worse off than if you didn't. Whoa, there's a parallel here! If you think about Internet radio royalties from a lawyer's perspective instead of a marketer's perspective, things go haywire, too, because first you get the laws worded in your favor, and then you field the more aggressive legal team, and then you win a super-high royalty rate. But it shuts down an industry that was actually good for you; so by succeeding, you're worse off than if you hadn't.)

So, trying to get back on track now, here are my six suggestions:

1) Take advantage of the Long Tail: To expand on what I wrote on Monday, Internet-delivered radio is revealing the true "long tail" of consumer demand for different musical genres. Example: Even though reggae isn't a popular enough format to deserve one of the 20 available slots on a given city's FM band, there in fact is a reasonable amount of consumer interest in a reggae-formatted radio station. (In any given city, perhaps only a few thousand people. But nationally, that's hundreds of thousands of people!) And there is a reasonable amount of interest in traditional jazz, Broadway, blues, Celtic, electronica, bluegrass, yoga music, classical oboe... This is the direction that music sales will move in—fewer sales of the big hits (which you may think is caused by casual CD burning or peer-to-peer file sharing, but very well could be primarily due to this phenomenon) and more sales of everything out there at the long tail. Labels who adjust to this change in consumer behavior will have a better chance of thriving.

2) Rethink CD pricing: A typical music CD contains about 50 minutes worth of audio and sells for about $12—and a Best Buy shopper back in 2001 might have thought that was an OK value. But in 2007, in the "TV Series on DVD" section of the store, that same Best Buy shopper now sees that somehow the video industry has managed to pack 20 hours' worth of video, plus audio, often with incredibly expensive production values (e.g., Alias season 3), into more attractive packaging, and somehow offer it at a price point of $30. So, you hold one in each hand—in your left hand, 40 minutes of audio for $12; in your right hand, 20 hours of video plus audio for $30. And you think, "Hmmm..." Other industries are learning that you have to compete on price and value, and that sometimes when you lower prices, you increase your total sales volume. Given the improved value your indirect competitors (DVDs, video games, etc.) are offering, I really don't think your clients can hold the $12 price point.

3) Rethink download pricing: Technology has handed the music industry a potentially wonderful new opportunity—tens of millions of people now own MP3 players that hold up 20,000 songs each. What a potential market for download sales! But what's the ideal price point? Let's take a teenager as our example: Jeremy owns an MP3 player that holds 20,000 songs. At the right price point, you can get him to buy a lot of songs. Is the right price point $1 or $1.30 a song? Do you reasonably think that Jeremy is a prospect to pay $20,000 or $26,000 to fill his MP3 player with music? No, he isn't! That simply cannot be the right price point. (It's also ludicrously high on its face—when there are no costs of shipping a physical product, the price should obviously be lower than when there's a physical product. Consumers know this.) Find the right price point, and you'll invigorate your industry. (BTW, I know you offer "rental" plans that can fill an MP3 player for $15/month. But they lack broad appeal because we live in an "ownership" society.)

4) Rethink your approach to peer-to-peer file sharing: Record labels in the 1930s tried to prevent radio stations from playing their LPs because they thought it would hurt sales—after all, why would someone buy the disc if the radio was playing it for free? As it turned out, airplay actually helped sales! The Bing Crosby records that got airplay sold a lot more copies than those that didn't. The same may be true of P2P. Remember, the music industry's best year ever coincided with P2P's strongest year ever (i.e., the year Napster was at its peak). People sampled vast quantities of music via P2P and they bought the stuff they liked on CD. It's counterintuitive but it might be true.

5) Quit being a jerk to your customers: Every month, the record industry causes an untold amount of pain for thousands of consumers by suing them for exposing song files via P2P services. You're causing tears, heartbreak, stress; you're taking away vacation savings and college funds. And you do it in such a way—a slow steady stream of lawsuits every month—that you derive virtually no worthwhile public relations value from it. You guys simply severely damage thousands of people's lives every month because you can. (You might respond, "They're infringers! They're not 'our customers'." But I'll bet that's not true—I'll bet they buy as many CDs as anyone else. Downloading tracks and buying CDs are not mutually exclusive activities.) You do have a point to get across: "File sharing is illegal. Don't do it." But there are better approaches that would be more effective in delivering the message and would hurt fewer people. Perhaps, for example, you could use the concept of "flighting"—if you're going to do lawsuits, do them in infrequent batches, with concomitant publicity. (Gets your message across more clearly and hurts fewer lives at the same time.)

6) Embrace your friends: Most of my recommendations above are about phenomena associated with the webcasting era but not about webcasting specifically. Here, I'd like to address that point. Virtually all Internet radio properties today were launched by music fans—people who love their genre (or genres) of music and want to see the musicians and labels involved succeed. They've designed Internet radio products that are, in fact, getting people excited about music again. (Again, see here.) Regarding this whole royalty imbroglio, to quote Jack Bauer, "You're making the wrong play." Instead of asking for a royalty rate so high that it would bankrupt webcasters and shut them down, as you did in your successful case to the Copyright Royalty Board, you'd be better off offering webcasters a livable royalty rate and a plan to work together to sell more product to consumers. If you guys do, you'll be surprised how effective working together can be!

Notes on Kurb’s New music marketing forum business model for artist management

2008-06-13T21:28:00.000+12:00

Okay this is a really long blog but as I say sometimes you don’t always have to blog for your readers. Writing my blog gets ideas out there, it’s like the wardance psyching me up for the technical battle ahead

Always be ready to pounce and innovate. Think about how my new ideas for reaching people with my digital promotion skills for kurb could transfer over to work for you creating value around your music. I think I’m going to do a blog on that just so you can connect the dots.

For more ideas on new revenue models for artists check this out:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2007/12/01/matt-from-kurb-can-haz-new-music-industry-model/

Okay so let me talk about this new idea.

I am going to be posting a lot and repeating myself a lot about how this concept works because this is the way I’ll be leveraging my blog to sell a quality proposition the same way you would leverage your blog to sell your music related products and services.

I think there’s a difference now between hard selling and building a platform or a frame with your product at the centre.

For example, if you write a blog post about a particular song, and I know if you’re a musician you should be able to describe what your music means or is about in painstaking detail, how is someone reading the blog going to feel about the song?

Probably really curious to actually hear it and check it out.

So what I’m developing is still a tiered pricing structure for kurb but it will be changing it’s operational structure to a private forum for which there will be a small cost for access:

Let’s get that one out of the way: US$40 p/month.

I can do this of course, because I run the company and I can. Another good thing about being in control of your music. The decision to try something radical and new is all down to you.

It’s based on providing at least the same or even more value for more clients at less of a cost because I really got stuck in to my this vision of marketing that I’m not selling a product or service but I am selling a solution to a problem.
And what I saw as the problem was bringing all the ground breaking efficiency of the digital world to artists in a way that translated to a low cost for a high value service.

My ultimate aim to strive towards is to actually replace the traditional structure of the music industry so that an artist can rely completely on a digital based service platform for all business related needs – all aspects not directly related to writing, performing and recording could be handled digitally.

From at $US10 p/week artists will access detailed instructions on how to implement and develop a comprehensive online campaign to create revenue – to at $US100 p/week where our staff would effectively manage your band completely, someone would even research and call venues in your city to solicit performance requests. Probably best to start with English speaking cities if you don’t mind!

You see n the past, I chose to cut down my amount of clients and charge more so I can work more closely on building strategies for artists and delivering on value. Now I want to move towards efficiently providing the same service to more clients at a lower price.

Because I’ve already said that you need a product for every budget. And so do I!

I HAD to introduce a $10 p/week digital promotion service.

I had to create the unique proposition to address this situation, because a band that can’t put $10 towards developing an internet promotion strategy isn’t serious.

And I get a lot of people emailing me who aren’t serious. People who need to spend a few months reading blogs before I could even help them.

How could I create worthwhile value for people who weren’t mentally or financially well placed to begin digital promotion?

It’s the same for a musician who MUST accept a first time visitor isn’t just going to grab your album on whim on showing up on your site. What level commitment can you get at this stage?

Also, scalability is an important part of any economic equation. You can scale a digital product like an mp3 download to as far as demand for it stretches but you can only play one or maybe two gigs a night. As Derek sivers says - you can make money in your sleep.

Now in moving my operation to this private membership forum I realised I could build a far more efficient business model buy creating a community who all have a universal exclusive access to ongoing information I provide.

The fundamental here is that even though I am somewhat open about what I do in digital promotions, A lot of stuff I would never tell you HOW I do it.

For example, in this blog I will tell you that if you go to this site of funny dog pictures

http://www.laughoutlouddogs.com

and leave a comment linking back to your site, it will help you on google.

On the forum, will be a list of 300 blogs you can comment on that will probably create so much google authority you’ll have 100+ visitors to your site everyday for the next couple of years.

Here’s an example – if you’re one of the guys who pays $US40 p/month you get the list, you can take a few nights, carry out the task. If you pay $US200 p/month, it’ll just get done by a kurb grunt.

But within this private forum will be an ongoing, ever expanding, ever updating reference to the world of online music business.

Licensing, publishing and publicity are areas that I have not been able to develop aggressively in the past but regardless I’m going to be pushing in every direction - there’ll be detailed tutorials of every single service I provide, total explanations of most of the techniques I use, basically, step by step guides to setting up your music for multiple avenues of online business and exposure.

Here’s the initial list of what the forums index will cover. The capitalised headings indicate where there will be a dedicated staff specialist supporting those on a premium membership (starting at US$100 p/month)

Getting started

Myspace and social networking

Campaigns and Strategising

Web 2.0, Blogging, Internet Marketing

SEO CENTRE (search engine optimisation)

Offline Tips – Performing, physical media

Social Networking

Licensing

Video and Youtube

DISTRIBUTION AND IMPLEMENTATION CENTRE

AUTOMATION CENTRE

WEB + GRAPHIC DESIGN ASSISTANCE CENTRE

MANAGEMENT CENTRE

Music Co op

In addition to that I will be posting regular articles and answering clients questions directly so that questions are accessible by other clients for future reference.

As I said, there will be a whole lot more I can say on a private forum that I can’t just tell the world on myspace or on my blog. The music world isn’t even thinking about Internet Marketing and the Internet Marketing world is to busy making money elsewhere to worry about music.

But access to the work we do will be even more transparent. For those premium subscribers who still wish to retain our automated services and other support we offer, within the forum, artists will be able to post tasks for myself and the team to take care of – myspace promotion, blog promotion,

It is my aim to outsource a full time graphic and web designer who will attend to design requests and tweaks to websites and blog design. Another junior assistance will be dedicated to automated promotion on myspace, youtube, back linking strategies etc. full time, while I will still be available to assist with personal consultations on strategy and will be available to answer questions in the forum directly and interact with premium clients at a certain point each day.

I think it’s time to go to the bullets.

OLD KURB DIGITAL COACHING AND ONLINE PROMOTIONS MODEL

$200 p/month: comprehensive digital coaching and online promotion strategy

$300 p/month: more comprehensive digital coaching and online promotion strategy

$400 p/month: really comprehensive digital coaching and online promotion strategy

NEW KURB DIGITAL COACHING AND ONLINE PROMOTIONS MODEL

Forum Level $US40 p/month

Access to members only forum
- all content, members q&a support, giveaways and special offers
Non priority support and assistance
- design, implementation, code
Basic static band page on Kurb Music

Automated level $US100 p/month

Automated promotion on Myspace, Youtube, Facebook
Basic blog with domain name and hosting
Band page on Kurb Music
Access to members only forum
- all content, members q&a support, giveaways and special offers
Low priority support and assistance
- design, implementation, code, copy
Basic SEO and backlinking

Assistance level $US200 p/month

Boosted automated promotion on Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, etc
Website design and development with blog and personal blog consulting, domain name and hosting
SEO and Backlinking
Band store page and promotion on Kurb Music
Access to members only forum
- all content, members q&a support, giveaways and special offers
Priority support and assistance
- design, commerce, implementation, code, copy, video

Obviously the whole thing is going to be renewed when we introduce the management package at $US400 p/month because as far as I know this is going to be the first fully comprehensive management service ever offered on line.

How are we going to manage it? Skype, and international calls to landlines at 3c a minute. That’s what a manager does, calls people and makes a real connection with people in order to give the act the break it needs.

I can think of nothing worse than having to call people on the other side of the world to encourage them to give a band a chance. But I’m sure there’ll be someone out there who loves it and will be great at it.

So whats the schedule?

Definitely hope to be showing people round the new place before the end of the month, but don’t expect the furniture to be in.

Over July I will hopefully allowing free sign ups for the forum level and I’ll be receiving expressions of interest on more intensive operations.

In august the first charges will be implemented, so full access will close for non paying members. And that’s when I’ll start a pretty heavy marketing campaign.

The forum will be initially limited to 100 sign ups, and 20 premium clients.

If it does become successful and I think given 6 months to build up a solid campaign, it’s highly possible, if I choose to allow more than 100 sign ups, I will drop the price.

I hope to bring in a management assistant in October and then next year create a management package designed to support full time professional musicians who need to have their revenue, fan management and promotion handled and scheduled completely.

Now as I said I’m going to be packaging all this stuff down into some pretty relentless pitching so please forgive me!

Deep Blog Surgery for musicians: Blogging support with wordpress content management

2008-06-13T20:20:00.000+12:00

Recently I’ve been deeply involved preparing - before I launch the new music marketing forum - to relaunch this blog and all my clients blogs on a self hosted wordpress platform.

PLEASE NOTE: I haven’t decided yet where this blog – the wordpress one that is, the myspace is staying put - is going to once it strikes out on it’s own, but I will certainly announce it!

I have

http://www.musicmarketingblog.info for key word search

and

http://www.kurbpromotions.com for branding

ready on standby. But don’t worry this blog won’t be leaping ship without letting people know. I will still post here for awhile yet just to let people know I’ve moved.

As I said, wordpress is clearly beginning to pull ahead of the pack in terms of blogging platforms which is most evident in the amount of support and applications for customisable features available from independent developers online.

Top internet guys are always talking about new stuff thats becoming available for wordpress.

But there was an evil twist! Follow this closely.

There are blogging sites which include free blogging platforms, such as blogger, livejournal, typepad and squarespace being some of the more popular ones and then blogging platforms which are also known as a CMS or a “content management systems” within themselves, seperate from the website.

A content management system is an application that allows you to update your website or blog without needing a web designer or a web design application to do it all for you.

Some popular CMS are Drupal and um ahhh . . . well let me just say Wordpress is now becoming clearly a very popular CMS. So much so that a lot of people use Wordpress for their whole websites because it’s so easy to use and you don’t need a web designer to do really cool stuff because as I said, there so many independent developers creating new free designs that look really professional and heaps of really cool apps or “plug ins” as they call them so you can add heaps of crazy customised functionality to your blog.

But what about the evil twist? I’m getting to that!!!

You see wordpress.com is a free blogging platform based on the wordpress.org CMS but severely limited in it’s functions and basically these functions were the whole reason we signed up for wordpress – namely really snazzy professional looking designs, supersmart intuitive ad delivery platforms, and super search optimizing plug ins that soup up your search rankability.

oh and did I mention that wordpress creams the competition when it comes to Google? Wordpress has a way of doing its thing that Google seems to like a whole lot better than even Google’s own blog platform, blogger.com and on top of that, you can download and install all these plug ins that automatically optimize your search engine authority automatically!

The one thing that can be said for blogger.com is that because it IS owned by the world’s biggest advertising agency it only takes a couple of clicks to be making a buck here and there in ad money. Good luck getting enough people to see them to get paid however, and the advertising plug ins available for wordpress are sweet. Who wants boring old google ads when you could be selling some crazy shit!

Like weird hats! And lizard food! And Green tea!!!!

I’m just saying this because lets face it. If your demographic is angry, cynical young men for example, are they going to impressed that you have “work from home” ads served by google all over your site without a hint of irony?

But I mean look around you at this wordpress blog. It’s looks like a 90’s corporate disaster. There must be at least one person who’s seen this blog and been reminded of a scene out of Robocop and just left because it looks ratty and unprofessional.

But this was the only one of 12 wordpress.com themes themes that allowed me to have a sweet little spot on the upper right there which is always that pic of me in my corporate pose and of course all the links to where you can get stuff that involves you giving me money, so basically the upper right is just one big ad for me.

Also not a good look is that I don’t have my own domain - as I said still deciding between

http://musicmarketingblog.info and http://kurbpromotions.com

Go for the keywords or the branding? Hard choice. Do I want more people to find me, or do I want more people to remember who I am?

BUT you see if you take the wordpress.org CMS platform and install it on your own host server only THEN are you allowed to play with all the cool toys, the design themes, ads, apps and plug ins.

Personally I say branding matters once your big. Worry about reputation once you’re big enough to have one.

But that’s when everything turns dark. You see the CMS is designed to protect you, the user, from the nightmare that is technical aspects of internet implementation.

It’s another one of those things, just like podcasts, that sound so harmless until you actually try and set one up and you want to kill your computer.

This is something I’ve always wanted to develop – because for people who know this stuff, setting up a podcast or installing a wordpress platform on a server is no biggie.

But expact an average musician to just do this stuff is inhumane and likely to lead to night upon night of fruitless struggle. I’m also really looking forward to bringing a staff person on board who can service my whole operation in this way, so artists can just be like:

”Hey we made an mp3 out of a live recording of our gig last Friday can we get it as a podcast up on itunes?”

And it’s sorted. For my own blog family and my current client base who have been very patient waiting for the new system to come in, I am actually using my highly qualified friends from http://www.giantrobot.co.nz to take care of this first round of wordpress installations which is not going to be cheap but it sure beats being bogged down in the technically incomprehensible world of the back end. Also premium clients are going to have access to high end blog and website hosting and administration - I have my own server now so you wont be getting a slow response because you didn't know you were sharing a server with mr. popular or mr. porn 24 hours across the way who shares your bandwidth outage.

When the new forum is launched soon the first support person will be a dedicated automations person to assist in automated social campaigns – mainly covering myspace and youtube.

Because automation isn’t something that songwriters and strategists should concern themselves with, it just needs to be done.

The second person who I hope will be on board before the official launch in august is a full time graphic and web design support person, it will be my hope that that support person will be available in the forums four hours a day to respond to such requests as:

- we need a poster for our gig coming up

- we need a gallery for our website so we can archive our photos by date and event

- we need our myspace to look flash. We want a contact box with our band logo in it and a flashing banner saying we’ve got a new song up for download. It’s a song about a monkey so there has to be a monkey on the banner.

- we made an mp3 out of a live recording of our gig last Friday can we get it as a podcast up on itunes?

- we need a new wordpress blog. We’ve chosen a theme, can you install it for us

online promotion and revenue on south park

2008-06-13T16:44:00.000+12:00

“We thought we could make money on the Internet, but while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn’t matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to an extent that necessitates content producers forego their fair value and more traditional media.”

This is essentially true and I wouldn't argue with it.

BUT there is already a small group of people who are making a 6 figure yearly income just from blogging!

It proves content producers can sit at home and earn a living. It's not impossible.

But this can take literally years of work. I know, Kurb's turning 4 later this year!

And although South Park suggests it take years before the digital economy has matured enough to support a large number of content producers, my honest feeling is that artists I'm working with now are building themselves into position that will favour them to be making triple figure incomes from online revenue sources by next year.

Our new music marketing forum is launching soon. It's going to be a private forum strictly limited in membership where you'll be given detailed instructions on each process involved in building your online entertainment empire!

And full premium clientele will also have access to staff who will carry out both day to day mundane tasks, support you directly in implementing aspects of your online promotion, and carry out specialized tasks such as graphic and web design.

TWITTER UPDATE:

Had an enlightened moment in regards to Twitter also.

Posting to a 140 character limit is the challenge of microblogging. If you find you have the ability to create value or stimulate conversation through a 140 character post, you could get a lot of leverage from twitter by cutting through the noise with some thoughtful statements.

For someone who isn't a great written communicator this could a lot less challenging than standard blogging.

But on the other hand for me, for whom written communication is a cornerstone of my marketing, it's a chance to tone down my rambling for a different audience who don't really want to delve quite so deeply into the realms of online promotion.

sex, drugs, and affiliate marketing: anyone for tea?

2008-06-09T15:19:00.002+12:00

Because I haven’t been posting too much on my blog my adsense revenue has slumped down under 50c a day. You gotta be posting daily to keep the momentum if you want to get those earnings up.

Remember I only have ads enabled on my blogger.com network which totally underperforms wordpress. It's quite obvious that Wordpress is starting to pull ahead of the pack in terms of favoured platforms because of the custom features available on the self hosted platform.

http://kurbpromotions.blogspot.com

You can also see amazon and google ads on my site http://www.kurb.co.nz

I’ve actually become a little inert on the blogging front there because my main focus ahead of launching my new online promotions venture is negotiating the technical aspects of shipping the whole lot of my wordpress operation from the limited free platform hosted by wordpress to the self hosted platform.

Unfortunately this is going severely damage my Google goodness I've got going here but I'll be going into this in another blog about why I'm doing this and why it's important soon. Just again. Technical stuff is a nightmare, so I'm doing it once, I'm doing it right!

Back to the ad revenue, unsuprisingly, the Amazon thing has been a bit of a flop. Someones not going to reading about music promotion and then instantly feel like buying a book or downloading an album from Amazon. I was aware of this, it's just that Amazon and Ebay are the two most rudimentary affiliate programs and it's a good place for artists to get their heads around affiliate marketing as a revenue source because, much like everything else on the net, once you start to tweak and optimize the system you have in place, then you start to see an increasing stream of results.

The most basic description of what I do is I study internet marketing (aka IM or MMO "make money online") and I try to apply the principals to musicians.

Remember I've talked about going deeper into affiliate marketing networks and coming to grips with how this industry works. And please let me stress again, that as musicians we're preparing for a new era to begin possibly within the next 12 months where foundations created now will turn into significant revenue streams.

previously I described an offer in which an affiliate could recieve a payment of $1.50 for each person who signed up for a toolbar that allowed access to free E-cards (greeting cards you print out or send by email)

A new offer I just looked at through one of these more advanced ad networks was a competition rewarding a cash prize of $2500 for the affiliate who could sign up the most people for a free 30 day trial of some green tea product. Not only that but each commission for the free sign up was $US26. Now let me be completely straight up with you about how this game works. From my awareness of techniques being used on the net at the moment, you are most likely required to submit your credit card details and if you do not cancel the order with in 30 days of signing up, your card will be automatically charged.

That's right, these people make an industry out of people being to lazy to forget to cancel payment for their free green tea.

Whether they cancel or not - you still get $26.

Now I'll just draw a line here for people who may not be familiar with the picture I'm painting.

If you have 1000 people on your mailing list and you send them an email saying check out this green tea offer, dont forget to cancel within 30 days or you'll end up paying for it, 100 people check it out and sign up, and you're banking $US2600.

Now as I said there are products to the days you can affiliate with. This was exactly what Lisa Loeb was saying. She tells her fans that she chooses these environmenetally friendly tissues or some such, and she's probably got cut action on the cut.

Now the good people at the affiliate marketing network, being that we're living in a digital age and all, have planty to help you out with, starting by suggesting that if you have access to a lot of married women 35+, then you're likely to get a lot of people interested in this green tea.

Got some great little diagrams here too.

uhh or not. check out http://kurbpromotions.blogspot.com

and personally I actually really recommend green tea as an energising and cleansing beverage!!! I would have no problems suggesting my fans drink more green tea.I guess remember this is about connecting with your fans. If green tea is not a good fit with your brand or you feel it would be irresponsible to put your fans into a position where they would end up paying for free green tea because they forgot to cancel their credit card payment - that's really in the essence of the message you provide to your fanbase.

Ariel Publicity: Goddess of music PR 2.0

2008-06-08T14:28:00.002+12:00

I’ve been meaning to write about Ariel Hyatt and Cyber PR for a bit, she had some great notes from a seminar with top manager label guy Terry McBride of Canadian management firm Nettwerk.

Ariel’s specialty is web 2.0 artist promotion, and I just had to do this post after checking out her audio interview with Bob Baker online, because this is exactly the kind of stuff I’m doing with artists and I was REALLY excited to hear someone talking more deeply about the kind of approach to online promotion I’m into.

Well it’s not really exactly the same thing, it’s the more the same approach, you see Ariel is a publicist, that means her main bag is as far as I’m aware is getting your music exposure through media channels, except her service is completely online. Here’s what it says on Ariel’s site.

Our Affordable Music Publicity & Internet Music Promotion Campaigns place you on Internet Radio Stations, Social Networking Sites, Podcasts, Online Magazines, Blogs, Vlogs, Audioblogs, Zines, Music Directories, Video Sites & Lifestyle Sites. We also handle tour publicity for artists on the road.

Publicity, I don’t really do much of at all, my strategies tend to be directly related to building fans and revenue. Logistically it’s a bit of a task to manage all those contacts. But I’m getting there! Usually I encourage artists to research their niche and find those where there’s a fit with your sound or what you’re doing, that’s where you’ll find your target audience. I also mention looking into http://radiodirectx.com and http://musicsubmit.com but more recently I’ve been looking at this other company to outsource all that work to - but they don’t look authentic at all!!!

When these people say they’ll submit mp3's to 600 music blogs, e zines and internet radio stations for $20, eyebrows get raised here at kurb.

So I first heard about Ariel with the launch http://musicthinktank.com site when I read her short bio and was struck by this statement:

"Ariel started Ariel Publicity, a traditional music PR firm in 1996. After 10 years of supporting mostly indie artists (1100 of them) she took the company 100% digital and renamed it Cyber PR, slashed her rates to 1/10 of what she used to charge and quadrupled her client base - and has been having a blast ever since!"

And to me that showed innovative, forward thinking, putting digital concepts into new music business practice and creating value in new ways.

See, in the old days if you were uh “lucky” enough to be signed you’d have access to publicists who spend up grands of your cash to get your song on the radio or a review in some magazine. Now you got people like Ariel and myself, who have a good understanding of how the internet can connect artists directly with people who are interested in their music.

So basically if you’re thinking of spending money on using the internet as a promotional tool - and if you don’t have a top 40 sound then online promotion is assuredly your best investment - check out Ariel’s interview with Bob baker.

This is talking all about web 2.0 and using it to promote your music. I really loved this audio because here’s Ariel, this publicist from New York, who was talking about everything I’ve been thinking, and shared my outlook in a way that really resonated because it's not just about having the tools (myspace, blog, twitter etc.) it's about using them. This stuff works if you do it right, it doesn't just happen overnight though. You can spend a lot of money on a real fancy lawnmower. But you still have to mow your lawn and weed your web 2.0 garden!!!

http://www.bob-baker.com/musicpromotionblog/2008/05/ariel-hyatt-web-20-audio-interview.html

And here’s some excerpts from Ariel’s report on Terry McBride from Music think tank.

http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/looking-ahead-into-the-new-music-business-aka-what-i-learned.html

I had a distinct honor and privilege to be in the audience where I saw the unflappable music business icon Terry McBride of Nettwerk Music Group (Avril Lavigne, Dido, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies), be interviewed as the keynote for the Le Recontres conference in Montreal last Thursday.

On why Nettwerk was structured the way it is:
"Artists are inherently lazy, so we had to do everything for them.”

On the 360 deal & The Barenaked Ladies:

“At first with Sarah we had a 360 deal, but as she grew, we gave her publishing back, and she owns half of her merchandise company. There is no business without the artist.”

Barenaked Ladies started their own label called Desperation. They own the masters and publishing, and so far they're on $10M in sales using only Nettwerk as their label and management firm – Nettwerk’s team manages all of the aspects of their career and leverages them through their own management company and connections.

Bands are brands and emotions

With the advent of the CD and computer, we went from pushing to pulling, and it created a change of behavior with having the “repeat” button on all CD players and listening to the same track over and over, which was something that was not possible with cassette tapes or LPs

Music is free
Terry has always believed that music is free. Back in the 1930's, music companies were terrified about radio and it took an act of Congress to get music played on the radio. His question is: How do you monetize free now that the fan owns the song, and the fan is part of a tribe?

Wherever there is fear, there is always opportunity
You will never change the behavior of tens of millions of teenagers, but you can monetize that behavior. If you shut down one avenue of dispersing free music another opens. Terry asks: “How many tens of millions of songs are being sent via IM?” and points out that we are so focused on suing the kids that we forget that they'll just go around us, and I'm not about that type of negativity. Litigation is an awful thing to do.

The consumer does not understand copyright. They never have and they never will. So, educating the consumer on “why it’s wrong” will get us nowhere.

Bury the suing paradigm and figure out how to monetize.

The new paradigm = more profits
A CD in the old paradigm of traditional printing and distribution used to cost something like this: $3 for the disc, $2 to get it on the shelf, $1 for marketing, $1 for the publishing royalty, and maybe $2 went to the artist, then you get 20% to 40% of those CDs returned on top of all of this.

In digital, there is no manufacturing, no distribution, and no return. The profit on digital is so much higher. When you go digital, you will be more powerful and more profitable.

Digital profits are currently up 300%.

Controlling intellectual property worked for between 30 and 40 years, and it does not work anymore.

If a share of the profit from cable companies could go directly to artists
music industry profits would double overnight
Terry is always looking at who is making money from this and are they sharing it? Cable companies, tool manufacturers like Apple and iPods, blank CD manufacturers.

Terry also thinks there should be a compulsory license, and if there was, the music business revenue would double overnight.

So where is the music business in 10 years?
Terry thinks music will be available everywhere. You won't pay for it
10 years from now, music will be in the clouds. You will be able to audit one company to get all of the numbers. It's not going to be Bell, it may be Google. Consumption of media knows no borders.

I believe the price of music has to come down. The millennium generation looks at value, and the value of music is not 99 cents a track.

Music is the connective glue between the fans and the artist.

We must ask: What causes that artist is related to? What causes is that artist supporting? What does that artist stand for? Who is this artist? Using those pieces of information, we can put ads on websites and links on websites to monetize the fans' behaviors. Everything you do around or about needs to be directed back to a lifestyle and back to that artist.

Last Advice?
If I were a long-term investor, I'd buy servers and the buildings that all the servers are going in. The millennium generation does not care about ownership. They go where the data is.
http://www.digitalmusicforum.com/mcbride_bio.html

And, if you have been living under a big rock and did not see the article on Terry Mcbride in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/nettwerk.html

music industry news bits june 08

2008-06-08T14:06:00.001+12:00

VINYL:

At present, the format remains a growing niche, and an interesting trend. According to shipment figures supplied by the RIAA, sales of vinyl LPs and EPs moved to 1.3 million units in 2007, up 36.6 percent from 2006 figures. That represents a dip from 1997, which featured a total of 2.7 million units.

TUNECORE:

Starting June 20th, flat rate digital distributor TuneCore will deliver a single track into any 11 digital stores of the customer's choice for a flat rate of $9.99. Current stores include: iTunes US, iTunes Canada, iTunes Japan, iTunes Australia/New Zealand, iTunes UK/Europe, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, LaLa, and Groupie Tunes. Shockhound and Amie Street will be added in the near future.

LISA LOEB GOES INDIE from http://hypebot. com

HYEPBOT: A lot of people believe there isn't a future in selling music and the artist needs to focus on selling products and services around their music instead.

Going forward, how do you see artists earning a living?
LOEB: For musicians who just want to make music, I think they can focus on making a living from their "music life," whether it’s selling records, recordings of live shows, tickets to shows, everything having to do with music.

For me, it makes sense that music is only a part of what I do. I like making TV programming. It provides me the creative freedom that I need in my life. I’m into physical fitness and food and nutrition. I want to be like Oprah and say “This is place I like to go get coffee,” “This is the reason that I use these tissues,” “This is the book that I read which is really cool”... For me it’s great to have a multi-media platform, and however I can monetize it [is okay].

Music is the core of what I do. I am considered a musician, and I am a musician. But I see it as more amorphous... Different things generate income and different things cost money to do. I want to do what I want to do, and I still want to make a living. It’s an interesting balance to figure out where your income is and where your output is going to be.

FANDOODLE

FanDoodle. com enables fans to distribute downloads for artists and labels and get paid for it. Unlike the Burnlounge pyramid scheme, which I understand finally went out of business, FanDoodle is straight forward and artist friendly.

Once music has been uploaded, fans place banner code or text links in their emails, websites, MySpace or Facebook pages, blogs, or forums. When someone purchases a download, the fan keeps 20%. While the ability to distribute downloads is not new, the ability to instantly distribute them in partnership with their fans is. Potentially, an artist or label can sell music through thousands of distribution points rather than just a handful. It's $9.95 for set-up and artists receive 60% of sales. Fans and FanDoodle split the remaining 40%. Not a bargain but comparable to what most indie acts receive after iTunes and a distributor take their cut.

From Matt:

I think there is a user generated commerce boom coming down the line. Artists who give up control of their content to fans who will take it and create revenue generating activity as a result will engage dynamically and profit wildly.

innovating and monetizing music industry 2.0 business

2008-06-07T17:34:00.001+12:00

(Okay this is a late breaking post, looks like I DID get a bit ahead of myself referring to this unpublished piece in my last blog! Whoops!)
I’m already probably getting a slightly notorious reputation in music 2.0 circles for my comments around the place – I don’t mean to be an upstart or create unhelpful contributions or show off although it might appear that way . . .

I just . . . well

Everyones talking about building communities, building relationships, building trust, building authority and how long it takes and how patient and persevering you have to be – and everyone knows I totally agree with all that stuff but y’know, if you want to be successful and get paid, I don’t think commenting blogs is exactly the direct path!

I mean I don’t mean to sound cynical. The point I’m suggesting is that internet marketing and online promotion has started to go a bit soft.

I mean sure. Build a community. Go for it. This is what you have to do if you want people to love you and your music. Especially I think communities are excellent ways for more performance (as opposed to more recording and “content” based artists) to build and mainatain fanbases.

But a lot of musicians aren’t crying out for adoration, they just want to see a bit of coin! Cut down to part time hours one day soon maybe!

And that’s why I wanted to write this piece as a preface to my new announcement just discussing innovation and how fundamental it is, because that’s what I’ve been getting at recently – building a community and a rapport with your audience is lovely but if you want to make money, you better get your head to innovating NOW.

What is so unique about what you’re doing that makes prospects desperate for your proposition?

What? because you’ve got a blog and a website and a couple of social presences such as myspace and facebook and twitter that you’re building conversation and community around?

That’s not unique. Having a platform is not unique and having a platform is not a proposition. A platform is a position from which to launch your proposition so that your voice will be heard and if it’s a truly unique and remarkable concept then it will gather traction.

That is why I think these bloggers ramping about “community” and Twitter and all these touchy feely marketing gurus are making so much money talking to so many people who are in fact not making any money, but like what theyre hearing.

Blogs and communities and social platforms are great and it’s my job to support artists in establishing those platforms but when it comes to the sale and the revenue it’s all about your proposition.

Have you become to safe in your unique proposition, is it unoriginal, are you offering something that others don’t and is that clearly illustrated to the prospect? Are you innovating to offer something that is truly unique in value?

Buying your album on itunes for $9.99 is not a uniquely innovative proposition. It does npt provide unique value because tens of thousands of other artists are already doing it.

What do I mean by innovation and how do you do it?

Well that’s why this post ended up being a separate post to the new announcement.

It was only a little way back I used to feel slightly ashamed when I announced a new project and it didn’t go ahead or come about. Now, you might notice I do it all the time.

Plasticast?

Kurb 50/50?

Choice.as?

Kurb Music?

Well, what happened Matt?

Well I was riffing! I was getting new ideas out there, into the conversation! I was thinking aloud. I’m developing and reflecting, testing and experimenting, improving and driving towards a significantly more effective way of providing value.

For example, with the plasticast, the innovation was to use my access to cheap cd production to create a free cd. The unique proposition to the user is: Do you want a free CD of new undiscovered bands?

It’s all about the beta launch, all about “Ready, fire, aim!” as they say. Launch, develop and refine.

Consider the weaknesses in your proposition in comparison to your competition and how they can be addressed and mitigated.

Do I feel like it has damaged my reputation? It doesn’t bother me. I would rather have a 100 ideas and go with the best one than going with whatever I thought of first and falling flat on my face.

Done that one before.

For me, innovation is a lot about the 20/80 concept – that 20% of your effort is responsible for 80% of the result and the other 80% is responsible for only 20% of the result, so I am constantly refining the techniques and propositions I use for an optimized result.

When Radiohead, NIN and Prince embraced innovation, they didn’t just make savvy financial decisions based on exercising the control they retained over their music, they gave their brands a massive shot in the arm.

To be honest, I hadn’t kept up with Radiohead since OK computer, but all the publicity bought me back into the fold. I didn’t buy anything, but I told a dozen peope I liked the new album, because I took the time out to actually be bothered listening to it! So, in short, for Radiohead, it worked!!!

Innovation is a ceaseless task. You must constantly consider new ways to improve on the marketing and delivery and on the product and service itself. As I’ve said I can’t be sure to assign the value of innovation to the changes that are happening right now in digital developments for creative industries but I can be pretty assured in saying no one doing things in the old way is going to meet with unexpected levels of success.

COMING SOON: Lets get down to the details of this new Kurb service!!!!

10 people you need around to build your music career

2008-06-07T17:25:00.000+12:00

Another top "Top 10" list from David Hooper @ http://musicmarketing.com

No man—or band—is an island. The success of any musician is the cumulative effort of many people. As you set out to become a legend, there are ten people you want to surround yourself and your band with. Whether you hire these folks, or simply find them and build a mentoring relationship with them—they have the expertise you need to get where you want to be: on top.

1. Stylist

Stylists aren’t just for corporate bands. Someone who is an expert in style and public opinion can give you an objective view about how other people see you. Talk to a stylist about your overall sound and the vision of your band and get some feedback about ways you can express that with your on-stage appearance.

2. Graphic Designer

A graphic designer is going to be able to help you design your “brand”. That can include everything from your website design, to your t-shirt graphics and your album cover. These are items that make a huge impression on people long before they have a chance to hear your music. Most graphic designers appreciate it when you bring them solid ideas and examples of things that inspire you. The more direction you can give them, the easier it will be for them to provide you with a finished product you’ll love.

3. Recording Techs

Live music and recorded music are two entirely different animals. You may have a great live sound, but if you’re going to make any money off your music, it needs to be recorded—and recorded well. Your MP3s can be placed on your website and circulated around the globe, so you want them to be the best possible representation of your band. Add to that the fact that recording time is so expensive, and mistakes can cost you time and money. It’s easy to see how important it is to find people who know their way around a mixing board.

If you can, ask other bands who they have helping them with the technical aspects of their recording. Or, you may place an ad and interview people who will help you in your session. Even if you use studio staff—don’t go in blindly and expect perfection in only a couple hours. Try to meet with the technical staff before you record and give them some idea what your expectations are. You may also want to hang out on some music industry message boards and get informed on techniques and terminology so that you can communicate what you really want when you get in to the studio.

4. Other Bands

Don’t look at other bands as competition. Each group is unique and has something different to offer. Each band has its own personality. You can co-exist peacefully with bands and find they are your best allies as you try to establish yourself. No one else knows what you are going through like another up-and-coming band. If you can find musicians who have more experience than you or who have already achieved success, try to form a mentoring relationship with them and let them help you through the landmines that take down so many young bands.

5. Groupies

No, I’m not talking about Tawny Kitaen. I’m talking about Classic Groupies—girls (and even guys) who are loyal fans. These are people who will be at every show, wear your t-shirt until it falls apart, and tell everyone they meet how great you are. These people will develop in to an entourage—they create a party wherever they go—even if it is just waiting in line to buy your tickets. They are an asset, and a time-honored tradition on the road to success.

6. Web Guru

The internet is where you’re going to be marketing yourself for the rest of the century, so you might as well get comfy there. No one expects you to be a geek, but you should definitely have an in with a geek to can help you establish yourself online. A web guru is going to be well-versed in web design and implementation, have technical skills for generating web traffic and search-engine optimization, and an eye on anything new that you can latch on to and use. Not only do you want a professional website, but you want to appear web savvy; which means using online tools and giving your fans access to those tools, too.

7. Business Advisor

Most musicians are terrible businesspeople. That makes having a business advisor all the more important. Whether you hire someone, or simply have a trusted friend with a business background give you some pointers, it is absolutely essential to have someone with a business mind help you make the most of your money. That means managing any income you have from gigs, album sales, or merchandise. It means planning a budget for the band, and knowing where and how to invest wisely.

8. Club owners

People that own clubs can give you great opportunities to perform live—but they can also give you added perspective and the experience that comes from seeing musicians perform on a regular basis. A club owner, if they befriend you, can provide you with all kinds of information including warnings of pitfalls they’ve seen bring other bands down. They know their own club or bar better than anyone else and they can tell you how to optimize your performance’s sound and appearance. They can tell you which nights are the best to book, and what kind of crowd to expect. They have their finger on the pulse of the music scene from a business perspective and can give you highly specialized information to make the most of your shows.

9. Friends and Family

Your friends and family are the people who believe in you more than anyone else. They are going to stick by you through ups and downs, successes and discouragements. They are a ready-made army of marketers who will tell the world how great you are with total conviction. Don’t alienate yourself from these folks. Let them put your name out there, and let them share in the victory when you get recognition.

10. Radio DJs and Press People

These guys have the ability to promote you in ways you cannot imagine. Most radio stations have featured staff picks on their shows, and radio DJs and music journalists also keep blogs on their company websites. If they make it to your show and like it, they’re going to tell thousands of people. Take the initiative and seek out DJs on stations that play music similar to yours and press people who cover music in your area. Send them CDs and invite them to your shows. Offer to give them an interview for their blogs and ask them to share their experience with you.

Music IQ: New Zealand 6# in the world

2008-05-28T17:05:00.000+12:00

From music industry news feed

http://www.hypebot.com

More than 26,000 respondents from 25 countries took an eMusic sponsored Music Intelligence test designed to determine whether they have a well-rounded music collection. The survey revealed that Icelandics have the highest average national music IQ with a score of 119.

The homeland of Bjork, The Sugar Cubes and Sigur Ros beat Switzerland who came second with 113 points and Ireland with 111 points. Other countries to demonstrate better than average music intelligence...

were The United States (101), France (100) and Sweden (101). The UK came in an equal fourth with Spain. At the other end of the scoreboard Israel, Mexico and Finland couldn’t tell their Kinks from their krunk, only managing 85 points.

The Music Intelligence questionnaire was developed by musicians, industry experts and journalists in conjunction with eMusic. Covering every genre and era of music, the questions ranged from Beethoven to The White Stripes.

THE TOP 10

1. Iceland 119
2. Japan 112
3. Ireland 107
4. Spain 106
5. Great Britain 106
6. New Zealand 104
7. Sweden 101
8. United States 101
9. France 100
10. Canada 100

Matt @ Kurb adds:

No surprises seeing Iceland come up on top, I've always been fascinated by how the Nordics run such sophisticated societies in the freezing cold.

Iceland of course puts New Zealand in second place for the highest penetration of internet users per capita.

From wikipedia:

As of 2007, Iceland is the most developed country in the world with fellow Nordic country Norway according to the Human Development Index[3] and one of the most egalitarian, according to the calculation provided by the Gini coefficient[4]. Based upon a mixed economy where service, finance, fishing and various industries are the main sectors, it is also the fourth most productive country per capita.[5]

twitbits: is tweeting on twitter for twits?

2008-05-27T17:33:00.000+12:00

Hey yo, it's matt from Kurb.

been having some nightmares with the website recently. All sorted now but have taken a mad hit on google.

Living 3 pages down at the moment.

Ouch! This could test my mettle as a marketer for sure.

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.aucklandposters.info

Gonna have the new concept for Kurb online promotion services rolling out soon.

Basically im on a mission now to provide everything for any musician anywhere in the world. Yup, even that job I wont touch - booking gigs!

Basically you're going to have access to a whole lot of top internet resources, info and tools looking at a price of about $50 p/month.

Then on top of that you're going to have access to a whole bunch of awesome secret cutting edge promotion services and expert assistance and implementation support at a level of $100 p/month

And at the final level of $200 which is what my clients have had to pay now, they're going to get priority access to all this new stuff, PLUS of course regular one on one strategy consultations with me personally, tweaking and developing.

Then in 2009 developing a total virtual management package priced about $400 p/month so we can offer comprehensive management services to anyone in the world. Yup, including bookings!!!

You'll be hearing much more detail soon, looking to go to beta in August!!!!

TWITTER

I must admit I was feeling as if Twitter was a bit dumb too.

But all my friends used to tell me 2005 that

"myspace is dumb"

"oh, I REFUSE to join myspace!"

They soon changed their minds.

It doesn't negate the fact that twitter is hot right now and if you remember my golden rule of social music promotion - that is, go where the people go - you'll be on twitter soon enough too.

From http://www.courtneytuttle.com

"All I see on twitter is an odd hybrid of a forum and a blog, except nothing meaningful is being said. And I mean nothing. So far as I can tell twitter is something the A List bloggers are promoting as a way to get their groupies to follow them around all day, begging for a shred of acknowledgment with some sort of “@joeshmoe” response to a….tweet (again, am I saying that right?).

Talk about a colossal waste of time. Be warned, there are those that are saying twitter is great for connectivity and getting information in real time."

Yup, web geeks LOVE twitter.

And it is all those big name bloggers crowing about twitter because it does have a bit of an indulgent side to it.

Sure you read my stuff because you want to learn about forwad looking music promotion.

You dont need to know that I might get a DVD out now I can watch while I pack these 120 christian personal development dvd sets I have to pack.

But I guess if you were my "IRL" (in real life) friend, I might love a suggestion!

Maybe next year it'll blow over. Or it'll just stay a geek thing.

But what if it doesn't?

As your online music promotion consultant I don't think that's a risk you want to take.

Just before I posted this blog I stopped by my Twitter account.

My call has always been that if you're a homebody like me and don't get out of the house much, spending days at a time online planted at the consul, nose to the grindstone, Twitter isn't going to bring your communication efficiency forward in leaps and bounds.

If you're a heavy touring artist or highly performance based or one of those highly mobile, highly networked individuals of which I know plenty, the access and simplicity that Twitter allows could be genuinely useful.

Even I'm attracted to the fact I can have my twitter app up on all my many myspaces, blogs, my facebook, crusty old profiles I never update manually and I cut down my update maintenance time from about half an hour to 5 minutes.

you can "follow" me as: MattNZ

As I just stopped by at my new account been getting into the swing, signed up to follow Dubber, Gerd, and Bob Baker.

But not Ariel because then she'll know I have a crush on her and I don't want things moving too fast. More on Ariel real soon.

Yup this "microblogging" thing could easily become a bit indulgent and unproductive.

But hey. Social networking is like that.

Already thinking about how to sp- "automate"

oh god and now I'm setting up so I can be a twit - I mean "tweet" - from my mobile . . .

here we go . . .

see you on twitter? forgive me!!!!

ps: twitter "does follow" so you get google juice from posting your urls

Innovating as a musician: New ways to make money online.

2008-05-27T01:58:00.000+12:00

In order to help everyone to better understand the ways people go about creating an online income, I wanted to provide a simple list, complete with a simple explanation of each method. I will also try to point you toward some resources that you can use to dig deeper into creating online income.

Remember!

It’s not a horse race!

Research, try different things out, innovate in ways that will work for you and your unique proposition, push forward with that, and drop the things that take effort and resources that aren’t working!

But if you got a hundred different ways to make a dollar every day well you’re not doing too badly in the music industry. In fact you’re doing great cos than you can make 100 into 200 or you can make $1 into $2.

Again, it’s all about innovating and getting to the heart of where and how value is created for the user or purchaser.

#1 - Starting a Blog

Blogs are informational websites that people use to share information. The basic idea here is that the sharing of free information can bring visitors to your website, and you can in turn make a profit from that traffic. Most blogs will show the latest articles (known as posts) on the homepage, making it very easy for people to find the latest information that has been shared.

People use a variety of methods to bring traffic to a blog including search engine optimization, social media, paid advertising, email marketing, and press releases. Recently there is a growing trend of bloggers using traditional media such as television and radio to gain exposure to their blogs, but in all honesty this is only happening for elite level bloggers.

To make money with a blog, people use a variety of different methods including selling advertising space, products, and services. Many other blogs make great money by using affiliate marketing, which is selling products for others in exchange for commissions.

This method is a great way to go, especially if you want to start casually. You can start a blog with no pressure, and allow it to build up over time.

Musicians tip: Musicians can use their blog not only to communicate with fans and draw in new ones but can also create authority, trust and rapport in a wider community by discussing issues of interest to the musician and the lifestyle associated with the music the community is built around.

#2 - Starting a Content Website

This method uses the same basic idea as idea #1. You will use free content to attract visitors to a location where you can sell advertising and products, and create exposure for your brand as a musician and music community authority.

Technically, a blog is a content website, but for the purpose of this guide, ‘content websites’ are the traditional content sites that aren’t blogs. A popular choice amongst webmasters is of course lyric sites.

You got a website with lyrics for 2 million songs?

That’s a lot of search volume.

That’s a lot of advertising space.

You may be wondering to yourself what type of content people use to create content websites. These sites can be built around literally anything, but many of them review products and services or report on news specific to an industry or niche.

Like idea #1, people use a lot of different methods to bring traffic to content websites, such as search engine optimization, social media, paid advertising, email marketing, and press releases.

Musicians tip: As a musician, always think about your niche. You a black metal band and got a lyrics site for every black metal song ever written? And every one of the thousands of pages has a link to your website, your blog, your myspace and an add for your album linking back to your cdbaby and itunes sale pages?

Yeah um that’s gonna HELP with your internet promotion. Help A LOT.

Of course building, maintaining and administering a monster content site could become pretty much a full time job in itself.

#3 - Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the process of promoting products for other people and companies, in exchange for commissions. For example, let’s say that you have a site that provides people with home loans. I could sign up as an affiliate and then push people to your loan site. When people get a loan, you will make some money and will pay me a commission. I would be the affiliate marketer and you would be running an affiliate program.

There are thousands of different affiliate programs that you can use to make money online. Here are some examples of some of the more well known programs:

eBay - eBay’s affiliate program pays you commissions when you get people to sign up for eBay, and also pays some commissions if the traffic you send ends up buying something on eBay.

Amazon - Amazon’s program pays you commissions for pushing people to Amazon. You earn a commission when a person you pushed to Amazon buys a product. Amazon commissions start at 4% and go up from there and depend on how many conversions you can get.

Affiliate marketing is often combined with a few of the other ways to make money online. For example, bloggers often use affiliate marketing to make money from their blog traffic. List builders (see list building section) use affiliate marketing as the primary method of making money with their lists. They will usually send their list an affiliate offer (an offer to buy a product or service) around once per month (sometimes more or less often).

Musicians tip: Affiliate marketing, when you’re ultra clever and have already established a loyal fanbase of 1000+ subscribers represents major opportunites for reasonably established artists to make money in the future that creates value all over the place. Really exciting area for the future.

There’s so much scope. Remember there are affiliate plans for so many things.

Offers can be

novelty – as in a different kind of product associated with the theme of a release or band related news item.

niche – I mean if youre in a punk or emo or metal band with a distinct culture around the music you’re going to be mad not partnering to make fashion items and accessories available as an affiliate. I think any niche can come up with specific high value products tailored to the audience.

trust based – this was something I posted before. When you have an affiliate offer that actually costs nothing, you can ask your fans to sign up as an act of good faith. In my previous example, affiliates were being paid $US1.50 for every sign up to a free ecard service. Get a large teenage or any loyal kind of following and youre going to be printing money.

Value based – There’s not only value for niche related products what if you affiliate with a product that’s just . . . a good product? What if I told everyone to set up skype and make 3c a minute phone calls around the world with a $30 USB handset and I collected $4 for every handset sold through my link?

Some items run commissions as high as 50% (why do you think internet marketers are so keen to sell you penis enlargement pills?)

#4 - List Building

List building is one of the more aggressive and powerful ways to make online money. The method combines amazingly well with affiliate marketing, and most good affiliate marketers rely heavily on building lists to scale up their businesses.

A good list builder will usually set up a site specifically to capture names and emails. You have probably done a search in Google to find a page that offered you a free product. All you have to do to get the free product is type in your name and email, right? By downloading that free product, you will probably be signed up to be on that marketer’s list. He will then be able to communicate with you in the future and will send you and everyone else on the list offers. A certain percentage of the people on the list will take advantage of those offers and this will get the marketer paid.

Good list builders will come up with ways to help the people on their list, which will keep them on the list for a longer time period. They are able to create a win-win. Over time, their list grows larger and larger which provides them with larger and larger income. Good affiliate marketers sometimes end up with millions of names.

To build their lists, list builders usually use a service like Aweber, which helps them to create forms to capture information, and stores the names and emails in a database for future communication.

List building combines with quite a few of the other methods, including blogging, affiliate marketing, lead generation, and starting an online service business.

Musicians tip: That’s what it says. Your mailing list is SO important now!!! You think giving your mp3’s away free is a silly idea if you can build a fan list of 10,000 people who have connected with your music and trust you?

And just think, when it grows that big and you’ve gained trust with all these people . . . I think your music career will be in rude health!

#5 - Lead Generation

Generating leads can be an extremely lucrative way to create money online. Mortgage leads, for example can be sold for more than $40 per lead, with no promise of conversion.

Usually the process of lead generation involves setting up a site to bring traffic, and then funneling traffic to a page where the visitor requests more information about a product or service. In the case of mortgage loans, the visitor would request more information about a loan. The marketer doing the lead generation (the person who created the lead) will then sell the information to a mortgage broker or company, who will in turn call the lead to try to get them to get a loan.

There are literally hundreds of different industries that rely on lead generation including:

Loans

Finance

Weight Loss

Real Estate

Credit Cards

Cell Phone Plans

Savvy marketers will set up businesses that capture leads in these and other industries and can make some truly killer profits.

Musicians tip:

Yeah I don’t know too much about this one. Affilaite marketing can be done smart by a band.

This kind of thing – mortgages and weight loss – im not sure will be healthy for your brand as a musician pushing this kind of stuff even if

Hey I don’t want to put you in a box but I mean – are your fans mainly fat people looking for houses? Cos if they are you could be doing alright!

#6 - Starting an Online Service Business

Those who become good at generating leads will often transition into creating their own service businesses. They usually realize that while they are able to make good money selling off leads, they could make more by creating businesses for the leads.

For example, a marketer may create a site at some point that provides people with good information about finance. They then go through the lead generation process to create and sell leads to an experienced financial planner. This goes great and the marketer makes great money, but eventually realizes that the financial planner makes a lot more from those leads than he does.

At that point, the marketer will often find a financial planner to partner with, or will become a financial planner himself. The leads are already there so the transition isn’t too complicated.

Selling services online usually takes a few simple steps:

Bringing traffic to a website

Generating a lead

Selling to that lead

Since the first step in the process is bringing traffic to a website, the method is often combined with other ways to make money online including blogging and list building. Many times, people that use this method will also purchase a good amount of paid
advertising, as long as they are able to convert that traffic into clients.

Musicians tip:

Again this is highly refined depending on what skills you have outside of your music – and I should know, because it’s my game!

Don’t step on my toes and decide you’re going to become an internet music marketing guru too! haha

As a marketing and promotions guy, this technique is a cornerstone of my success – having used the concept in theory to create lucrative innovations several times and I will continue to do so for that reason.

For example – aside from kurb promotions itself most obviously – I’ve just started a new business went back to my part time job in university telling dressing up and telling pirate stories at kids parties because I already had the marketing and business skills, I just needed to find an expensive unique high end high value service or product I could deliver.

http://www.piratesofauckland.info

So yeah, if you have a kids birthday party coming up, I only charge $150 per hour!!!

DON’T FORGET: this also applies to licensing as a service!!! You might want to think about creating a page or section of your website solely addressing and soliciting for licensing enquiries.

#7 - Creating Products

Those that make the most money online are often those that create their own products. These products are often informational and can be downloaded by the purchaser.

For example, a savvy marketer will do research and then create an information product that will teach people how to lose weight. The product will probably be sold as an ebook or as a site that has a paid membership. The marketer will then use a variety of methods to bring traffic to the site including affiliate marketing (the marketer will recruit affiliates), paid advertising, list building, and sometimes blogging.

Since an informational product costs basically nothing to deliver, there is often great money in creating this type of product. I would highly recommend getting some experience before using this method because there’s a lot to it.

Musicians tip: No brainer. You’re a musician, you sell music. Recently I’ve put a lot of emphasis on innovating your product line but that needs a whole post.

You’re not going to sell a whole bunch of copies of your CD’s any more. You will sell some cd’s. And if you’ve got say

500 other products and different price points and value propositions

You’ll probably sell a fair few of those, too.

I personally will be looking into the ebook thing, maybe when you’re taking a little time out to think about innovating, you might too.

#8 - Setting up an Online Store

The old fall-back is creating an online store that sells tangible products. Some people will buy products at wholesale and sell them at retail for profits. Others will drop-ship, which is the process of selling a product before you buy it. You hold a list of what you can buy products for and sell them at an increase. Your supplier will then ship the product for you.

This method is often combined with many of the other methods including list building, lead generation, affiliate marketing, and creating products.

Examples:

Amazon

Lets Talk

Buy.com

Musicians tip:

I’m also huge on this - although I don’t see it as a big long term money spinner like affiliate marketing to your mailing list could possibly become, there’s no reason why with a lot of targeted traffic, especially if you’re active in a very obvious niche, you cant pick up more of those lovely little long tail earnings.

Bruce Warila @ http://www.unsprungmedia.com mentioned in a blog about how to consider the concept of “competition” in the music business.

http://www.unsprungmedia.com/unsprung_wisdom/2008/5/12/how-to-reprogram-your-hyper-competitive-manager.html

Your fans may have already bought your album! That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be interested in more stuff that you’re probably in an excellent position of trust and authority to recommend.

Get it right and you not only pick up th e commission but that’s right – your authority and trust within your little niche community continues to grow.

You see we’re living in an era where there’s so much information that trusted sources for high quality content are going to in the position to create a lot of value.

As soon as Dubber @ http://www.newmusicstrategies.com started his liquid crunch store I knew there was just a little bit of a push toward innovative thinking going on.

http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/04/22/can-independent-record-stores-survive/

Dubber often seems to do these things – such as putting ads on his blog – more to illustrate how rewarding and valuable these propositions can be in the wider context of the music related products, services and value you provide.

Attack of the innovators

2008-05-26T18:05:00.000+12:00

What is going on?

Just trying to have a chilled weekend and not work 12 hours every day and what happens????

I’ve gone and innovated EVERYWHERE.

Whoops. Sorry.

I’m just innovating all over the show. I can’t turn around without innovating some product or service or brand.

I was just casually innovating my business model like I often do, thinking about innovating on my blog, when suddenly I just started innovating spontaneously and decided I might record myself talking about how to become a famous on the internet for an hour or something and sell it for like 99c on itunes.

Just another way I’ll be earning $1 a day for the rest of my life.

Y’know?

You need to innovate. Just as much as you need the next song you write to be the best thing you’ve done, you need to be thinking of new ideas about how you do things, taking your strengths, taking the best and most successful parts of what you do and taking that forward to a unique new position.

Look at possible new ways to minimise areas where you’re skills are not strong, areas that drain your creative and emotional energy because you don’t enjoy them.

I’ve been innovating like crazy.

On one hand I had clients lining up at the door, on the other I was troubled that I wasn’t delivering the best service possible for my current clients.

I was troubled by the Jerry Seinfeld dilemma. Where was my mid range product?

It's not about me, it's about you, if you want to spend $20 on promoting your music, where is my product for that niche?

have you got a product for every niche, the casual fan, the supporter, the wealthy obsessive collector?

Expanding your business operation is not something to take lightly – ladders can turn into snakes if you take your eye off the ball.

So this week we’re going to be talking about innovating and some exciting new developments at Kurb so I can share what I’m doing with more artists at a price that more artists can afford and create even more value.

Stay tuned.

Commenting on blogs as a promotin strategy

2008-05-24T16:14:00.000+12:00

One thing not touched on here is commenting as a search engine strategy - remember when you comment on a blog there's a little place where you can put your URL (website/blog address) and this CAN add to improved "google juice" BUT many blogs have what is called a "no follow" implemented so you cant gank google juice off them just be leaving

"great post!"

comments.

COMMENTING ON BLOGS AS A PROMOTION STRATEGY

Commenting on blogs is often an effective strategy for promotion. It can boost your credibility, bring in more sales, and increase your revenue. A well-placed, well-written comment gets readers interested in you, and they’ll follow you back to your blog, website or profile page to find out more about you.

Blog commenting attracts attention. And attention is good.

Your commenting helps convey that you’re real, with ideas, thoughts, and personality. That’s appealing, because it creates relationships with other people. And that’s what business is about these days: relationships, not just dollars and cents.

Each person that sees your comment is a potential customer. The more people that become familiar with you and your business, the more likely they are to take that next step and buy from you.

The best blog commenting strategy starts with – you got it – research. You need to target specific blogs that offer the best return on your time investment.

Choose blogs that target the same people that you’re targeting or that have an audience that needs what you offer. For example, if you sell personalized cat collars, find blogs for cat-lover communities. If you offer virtual assistance services, find blogs for online entrepreneurs.

Tapping the Activity Potential

Make sure that the blogs you target have good-sized readerships – but not huge ones. Many comments on a post may seem attractive, but the reality is that your comment becomes lost in the sea of other people. Likewise, blogs that have very few comments may not attract enough attention to be worth your time.

An established blog with good participation can be just the right size. Something in the middle between no readers and too many readers – say, a volume of 10 to 20 comments - can be just the right size of blog to target.

Time Is On Your Side

Many people think that blog commenting takes a phenomenal amount of time to be effective. It can take time, yes, especially if you’re not a fast reader or writer. If that’s the case, focus on two to three very targeted blogs and invest a half hour a day at the most in your strategy. Or less. Or more.

Your efforts directly determine your returns. Do more and you’ll get more attention and clients. Do less and you’ll be forgotten quickly. On the Internet, out of sight is out of mind, and fast.

The Nitty Gritting of Commenting

Want some fast tips on effective blog commenting? Here you go:

* Never leave one-liner sentences that don’t add value. “Great post!” is a fast way to make sure people gloss over your comment.

* Keep your comments on the short side. Long novels tend to become boring and people skip past these monologues to the next comment.

* Sound positive. People like happiness and inspiring comments. Show your optimism each time you write.

* Be friendly. Address other commentators directly. Instigate conversation. Ask questions about their work or a comment they left.

* Disagree – politely and gently. Sometimes, taking the opposite stance with some friendly debate can be a good thing. Avoid disagreeing all the time, though.

* Don’t push a sale. Focus on building a reputation and a relationship. No one wants a sale shoved in his or her face.

* Don’t link drop. You have a field for your URL – use that instead of peppering comments with links.

* Use your name. Some people hide behind cute or witty nicknames or only use their business name to identify themselves. It’s a bad idea and detracts from your business credibility.

Already Have a Blog?

If you have a blog, and you’re ready to commit to its success, then it’s time to become part of the blog community.

Your goal is to establish a firm presence to be easily recognized by others. It doesn’t take long before people remember you and treat you as one of the gang. They may discuss directly and address you personally. You might even strike up a conversation or move on to emailing, which is a step closer to a sale.

It’s word-of-mouth marketing, the best kind.