Market and Manage your music online

Need music marketing strategies?

It’s $600 for the first 3 months. You get help with EVERYTHING listed below in this article. You pay $400 upfront and if you’re happy after 3 months, you pay us the next $200.

Email, Matt: kurbpromo@gmail.com - let’s talk about where you’re at with promoting your music and what you need to complete the picture and launch an online marketing campaign.

Includes: Youtube Promotion // Set Up + Blog Promotion // Graphic Design

Kurb’s music marketing services are:

Comprehensive - that is we cover everything in house

Personal - We provide fresh strategies for YOUR act based on your marketing needs, not some “one size fits all”  solution

Affordable - Our workers are co ordinated in New Zealand, Phillipines and India.  That means you won’t get this level of service and expertise for this price anywhere else.

Kurb’s top 10 Music Marketing, Promotions and Online Artist Management Strategies for 2009

1: WEB DESIGN + DEVELOPMENT: Most musicians can’t succeed online because their websites don’t provide a compelling experience for fans or prospects who visit their site. You can’t afford to see your website as a static platform. Your website is your channel from which to interact with all those who are not yet fans. It must develop at least every month. Continued commitment to developing website design and content that more effectively express your brand as well as deepen your fans experience, so that they are confident and invested enough to make purchases . . . then sales happen. Industry people who provide opportunities are a whole seperate group from your fans and also have to be addressed through your website as the primary point of formal introduction to your brand.

2: PPC MANAGEMENT / ADWORDS: Pay per click advertising on Google and other content networks is the fastest and most powerfully qualified option for advertising spending in 2009. With as little as $20 p/week you can begin highly measured and precisely targeted campaigns with us on Google Adwords. Adwords is great for any musicians who have put the necessary preparation into building a platform that will retain fan engagement - which is where we also assist artists to build a strong online presence from which to engage (blog, mailing list, video, see below) -  and is effective when targeting genders, age groups and cities/regions. Even amateurs can return positive ROI advertsing on Google through Adwords, but there are many common mistakes made by those who don’t understand how the system is balanced. Experience in using the PPC can lead to radically enhanced results, in terms of minimmizing adwords costs.

3: EMAIL MANAGEMENT: Maintaining relationsips with fans through email marketing is still one of the most powerful ways to generate dependable recurring revenue over time. It’s the best way to manage fans in such a way to optimise engagement that leads to sales later. We provide professional email management solutions for all our clients, but those who are interested in email marketing should know you will have to build your contacts first through other online marketing efforts, most often a blog, and then maintain your mail out, which is going to need content. Once you can graduate to greater levels of automated email marketing, you can implement powerful systems to create wealth with minimum maintenance.

4: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: Anyone who tells you they are a social media expert had better be ready to back that up with proof. Social Media Marketing is not a strategy for ROI for musicians. The aim of social media is to build meaningful relationships with engaged social media users who have the power to build a powerful, authoritative and authentic viral word of mouth. Just like blogs, building a strong social media presence has many benefits for musicians, often it’s the first and easiest way to start negotiating fan relationships and building heavily branded platforms and presentations. It’s just social media promotions strategies must remain practical in terms of the bottom line.

5: BLOG PROMOTION: Blogging is still a top strategy for music marketing as long as it doesn’t interfere with normal operations or become your only marketing strategy. Because a well maintained blog developed over months has so many advantages and develops your marketing platform in so many ways - reinforcing your whole online marketing effort from SEO, developing customer service, website development, good content paublishing practices - the work put in to build a lively and dynamic blog will never be wasted. We provide blog set up, blog design, blog promotion and can even create content and run your blog for you.

6: ONLINE VIDEO: Online video is the new power in online marketing. Fans seek engagement, trust and authority with musicians products, services and brands - particularly as the range of what’s available begins to diversify dramatically. Fans seek stories that give commodities and their brands value and credibility and video is the most powerful way to engage people and quickly create trust, authority as well as impact. Musicians using video in new, more and different ways to communicate with fans will have a much greater opportunity to appeal, and online video is only going to get bigger and continue to steal more influence from traditional TV.

7: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION AND MARKETING: Search engine marketing is still the most powerful marketing technique accessible to entrepreneurs on small budgets, but precisely for this reason that SEO finds itself at #5 on this list. SEO is competitive. SEO is a challenge for new websites and new promotions. Ranking highly in Google for your favoured keyword search terms is better than any advertising and would give you unmatched access to your market. But the results of SEO work can vary. A Successful SEO campaign takes research, it requires a lot of tedious tasks, and that of course costs. I will underline how powerfully effective our SEO can be but you must have the patience and commitment for it if you are in a competitive niche or you’re not hypertargeting some incredibly specific niche angle.

8: Article Marketing: Article Marketing leverages written content for exposure that can be syndicated far and wide to provide exposure to click through traffic as well as considerable SEO benefits. Article syndication as well as freelance article creation is offered as part of our general online marketing strategies. If you don’t have time to build your web presence, it’s better we create monthly content for you then having no new content at all, essential to online marketing is the snowball effect of more content going out online, more backlinks leading back to your site and more traffic.

9:Viral Marketing: More powerful than spreading ideas is building an idea that spreads itself. Whether a video or other media, a competition or a mash up - or even a piece of software or app - the essential concept is the power of an idea to proliferate by way of online sharing without any secondary involvement from the artist. The success of a Viral Marketing campaign is never assured and taking risks to put forward powerful branding messages or leverage powerful value propositions that engage so deeply that it spreads online or through word of mouth is a longshot but always has the potential to be outrageously successful with a bit of character and flair.

10: Community building: Again building a community around your brand makes long term commitment and personal contribution unavoidable - this ia successful strategy if executed well, and timed well in an artists career trajectory. But you can’t just create community based loyalty to a musician overnight. Certainly, strategies to nurture your community and provide functionality by way of a forum or other platforms to encourage different kinds of interaction and user driven content creation around your brand can be provided easily and inexpensively and provide great leverage, but early on there will need to be a dedicated effort to inject activity into the community space. This can be more time consuming and long range than many small businesses are prepared for.

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Phone me Matt on: +64 (0)27 6848250

MUSIC MARKETING PACKAGE
$US600 - 3 Months Duration includes:

Website/Graphic Design and Development
Blog Set Up and Development
PPC / Google Adwords Management

Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing
Copywriting
Youtube Promotion
Ongoing consultation

KURB TOP ONLINE MUSIC MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR 2008

1: Website Development
2: Google Adwords / PPC
3: Blog Promotion
4: Online Video Marketing
5: SEO
6: Email Management / Marketing
7: Article Marketing
8: Social Media Marketing
9: Viral Marketing
10: Community Building

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Do you need online music marketing services?

I’m Matt, and at Kurb we offer a service that is comprehensive - that is, covers pretty much everything you need to have ongoing online promotions; personal - that is, we carry out our promotions based on what’s appropriate for you, not just ramming your music through some system we came up with; and affordable - that means you’ll pay four times as much as you would in L.A. for the same thing - because we’re from New Zealand, but the service you get will be four times as good as it would be from some dudes in India; because we’re in New Zealand.

It costs $600 for 3 months. You pay $400 upfront and if you’re not happy after 3 months you can keep the rest.

Email, me, Matt Turner - Kurb Promotions: kurbpromo@gmail.com
Adwords PPC is one of the most serious weapons in my music marketing arsenal right now. Whenever I worry about how business is going I always remind myself I’ve only got the volume set to about “1″.

I mean, hey, it costs money. Most good things do. Business costs money. The labels that used to do the business side of things are disappearing and artist have to get into business for themselves. It costs money.

When myspace started to go downhill it was a testing time, I’d built my whole online business on helping artists to spam myspace in the smartest ways and basically studying interactions between musicians and their fans because there was so much going on to observe.

I realised when you’re constantly trying to “game” certain websites it’s only going to be a temporary strategy. Youtube closed the door on fake views earlier in the year . . . because fake views worked! Fake views created real interest I saw it happen - I mean, well, it’s my job!

But real interest never turned directly into sales on myspace or youtube.

A smart band strategy would be to stay fluid and shift your myspace efforts to twitter knowing something else is around the corner for social media after facebook and after twitter . . .

But when it comes to straight up and down online marketing and business it’s still about websites bringing in traffic and making sales, that’s why the core of of promoting any brand online is search engine optimisation -  which let’s be honest, takes years to develop viably - or pay per click advertising which takes about 4 hours to set up a decent campaign.

Now don’t trust me to be modest here. There are a lot of layers to the art of ppc marketing, it’s taken me a while to realise it was something I’m just naturally really good at, or maybe it’s just the experience built up in doing this online thing full time for years now.

So just like myspace or youtube or building up a blog or anything else you might see me about - sure you can buy a copy of friendblaster, sure you can grab a free wordpress hosted blog at www.wordpress.com, sure yo can get an adwords account with google but often artists do all these things and they’re still not doing it right and they’re still not freeing up time to create more and better primary content.

If you’re going to use all these things to your best advantage you need support from someone who lives it. If I showed up at yours and tried to play some of your songs do you think I’d do any good at it?

So are you going to nderstand google adwords pay per click? The amount of information to impart on the science of this thing is just vast. Your best off with someone like me who has experience in setting up adwords - performing the necessary keyword research, setting the parameters at an optimum, and most fundamnentally: Making VAST amounts of ad variables.

But . . . ALSO knows about music, niches, and can make relevent connections.

It takes hours to put this knowledge into an adwords campaign but god is it worthwhile.

Expertise. I has it.

But the other point is that there’s no reason to put money into ppc campaigns unless your platform has actually been developed to the point you’re able to create a positive outcome - which is an email sign up principally. There’s no point throwing a whole bunch of money into adwords if you haven’t got a proposition to engage with or you’re not going to have any recognisable measure of success.

Again, this is why artists are coming to us - because we provide that whole platform set up, establishing a landing page and email list as part of the deal and to launch an advertisng campaign within 3 months.

Our marketing service is all one fluid promotion strategy, platform, content and promotion.

You’re just not going to find anyone else in the music business who is able to set everything up for you - build the website with email sign up management, write your sales pitch, and then launch an online ppc advertising campaign to begin getting sign ups - all at one low price.

In 3 months online promotion with us priced at $600, you get all this and MORE.

Places are ALWAYS limited, but unless you email us you will never be offered a place as they become available.

Email: kurbpromo@gmail.com

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Need Music Marketing services for your band, act, music or entertainment brand?

That’s what we do. Comprehensive plans - that means we do basically everything you need online - design, websites + blogs, social media, fan management, video, google traffic, content distribution and promotion - there’s someone here who can do it. AND Personal Attention - that means ME talking to YOU about what YOU need to work and make progress with YOUR music. Not some software, some bot or some “masterplan blueprint for instant industry success” no. We work with you to build yourself a music and content business.

It’s $600 For 3 months. You pay upfront $400 first, and after 3 months, if you’re not happy, you can keep the rest of your money.

EMAIL: kurbpromo@gmail.com PHONE +64 27 684 8250

Alright time for some plays on the music marketing scene, I just get a feeling things are really starting to pick up and we might see things really start to ramp. There’s a general air about that it’s time to quit with the talking, and have new ideas come forward that become the basis of new systems that are qualified new industry standards for a fully digital music industry.

And what I see is some of the movers starting to play their hand, where as others could well be shown to be coming up short when it’s time to deliver the goods.

Personally - I just recently bought a staff member on board who’s soul job is to distribute articles and posts that I have created both for my own blogs and my artists blogs so we can spread content from myself and the bands and build all important one way backlinks.

For me, It’s like the artists I represent - It lets me focus on the creative energy and have the systems in place to distribute and leverage that creative content, otherwise rather than building and progressing new ideas as you should be doing - you just end up doing all this donkey work.

And if you don’t do the work you’re just going to stay that little blip on the radar with some “really nice songs”, it’s never going to work unless you play it smart.

The other thing I’ve been looking at again is new ways to game youtube, as a lot of those opportunities to get an edge got flushed earlier this year when youtube got wise so just developing some interesting new strategies there for youtube video promotion - just another tiny part of our comprehensive online music marketing packages.

So that’s me, working away with the small group of artists I work with. I wont ever work with 20 artists at a time any more I just can’t focus on the essential nature of that artists brand that has to be developed. Personalised music business and marketing support is now crucial. Me, well I’ve already got this hustle down pat so I’ll just keep charging more. Best to get in now, then.

But if you are looking into retaining a serious music marketing solution, if you’re hiring an outfit to give you personal online marketing support for your music or your entertainment brand and they come to you talking about some myspace thing, you’re probably in the wrong situation.

Wanna hear my myspace strategy? Have a myspace. That’s it. Songs, Pictures, Bio, Links, contacts, next - there’s more important stuff to worry about. Let one of my guys log in and post your blogs to your bulletin board and myspace blog, update the shit on your page.

That’s nonsense that needs to be done, but you can’t be worrying about if you’re trying to become a creative force.

Oh sure, we can do the friend adding thing and all the bot stuff if you like, but honestly . . . Myspace just lost it’s last hold, the US, and cut 30% of it’s staff. Facebook dominates. Wanna know the bad news? You can’t spam facebook with a bot. Do you have a facebook presence? No? One of my guys can set you up a facebook and show you how to use groups, Facebook can be a real cracker for gig promotion, and we can help with that.

And this is personal attention. This isn’t done by a bot, this is done by someone who knows facebook. That’s the difference, personal attention to detail when dealing with your explicit needs as an individual artist appealing to an individual niche.

I mean, look at this guy, he’s actually one of my old clients, can you believe it? Look, as far as this guy is concerned I want to save my ammunition but this gives you an idea of exactly what to avoid.

Eric Herbert and Greg Rollett have launched their new music marketing platform label 2.0 recently. Now these guys definitely have a few clues - both have shown good SEO skills building high google rankings for good keywords on their respective sites, and Greg in particular I know is a big crusader for the landing page and the email management which are very strong in my approach also.

This is because this is basic internet marketing strategy that has been used to market everything under the sun, but for some reason, not music? Basics. Landing Page. Building and working a list. Providing heaps of value up front before you even think about trying to put a sell on them.

Check out this post from Way Cool Jnr. that totally tore up the net in the last day or so - the online artist report card - so many strong ideas coming through here which really made me start thinking there are quite a few of us who have quite clear ideas about how the new business models can be applied practically.

The clear theme coming through that I’ve noticed from Ariel Hyatt’s posts on Music Think Tank also recently is the application of common and popular general internet marketing concepts.

She’s talking about how to leverage that list to sell those essential core fans on your list more and different stuff presented under your brand, what is commonly referred to as “upselling”.

Whereas with me you know I’m rabid about branding these days because without a knock out brand thats totally out there, 1000 crazed fans who want to buy anything you’ve got is a far off dream.

Some funny stuff from Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies also - seems to be very much rolling up his sleeves and keen to apply some of his wisdom practically. Much more practical, on the ground, in the trenches stuff coming from him and his interactions with real musicians.

Note that he also has been starting to push his consultancy services and this to me is a great demonstration of another principle of been harping on about - finding extremely high value services you can offer and leverage to get funds immediately.

Andrew knows with is highly engaged list of over 4000 subscribers to his blog, all musicians and music business people, there’s surely going to be a groupwho are williing to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a consultation with him.

Just like Andrew - or me for that matter - how can you present services that provide high personal value for individual fans that allow you to make a decent wack of cash from an hour or a nights effort?

As for Bob Baker and Derek Sivers I guess they only need to rest on their laurels and rub their bellies and laugh because they basically invented independent music marketing.

But is this the new model? We’ve read about the music entrepreneurs behind the music from reading Lefsetz, the guys who built the stars, is it time for a new era of music business people, of music industry star builders, developing brands from which to monetize attention in new ways?

Rather than a label and a manger sucking your lifebloodwith a contract, or  would you have me and those like me contracted to serve you?

This is where the new musicians is in the driving seat - to decide the future for their own music business.

But really to me the challenge is as it has always been - in the monetization. Give me an artist who is marketable and $5000 to burn and I’ll get you your 1000 true fans. If you’ve got an artist now, with fair talent and appeal who’s got the commitment to understand that the music game has now returned to the true players, and the days of manufactured overnight sensations are gone . . . then you’ll get your 1000 true fans.

If you think this is just something you’ll do for now while you’re young, you’ve got the wrong idea. Do it for fun and have a blast, but don’t think of it as a business.The money you put into it now won’t be coming back for years to come so get used to the idea that if you don’t plan to be around then to collect then you’re kissing it goodbye.

Because the true challenge for us who offer music marketing services, online artist management and internet promotion, is turning that 1000 true fans that will take years to build into a decent income for musicians. If you can keep writing the songs, rocking the videos, blogging and really using the tools - twitter, for example - to truly connect . . . then it’s up to US - the business and marketing people that you have behind you - whether they’re paid upfront like me, or your bound to a contract like a traditional label or manager.

It’s now time for the innovative thinkers of music marketing and the new music 2.0 industry people to bring what they’ve got and deliver value for new musicians - new careers, new stars and a new music business.

It’s $600 For 3 months. You pay upfront $400 first, and after 3 months, if you’re not happy, you can keep the rest of your money.

Need Music Marketing services for your band, act, music or entertainment brand?

EMAIL: kurbpromo@gmail.com PHONE +64 27 684 8250

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Hey it’s me, Matt from Kurb again!

We offer comprehensive music marketing services, it’s $600 for 3 months.

You get comprehensive strategy, email management, web development and design including your blog promotion, video promotion, social media promotion and basic online content promotion - copywriting, and article marketing, graphic design, search engine optimisation as well as advertising campaigns online. This is full artist management and development for future revenue and music business! Contact kurbpromo@gmail.com today to talk about getting your spot while it’s available!

I guess I’m a little bit more positive about blogs now to help promote artists but it’s definitely not a short term music marketing strategy - it’s a strategy to build engaged readers and pan for gold (fans) amongst a lot of random search traffic, but as long as you’re committed to the many months it will take to become rewarding then it will be worthwhile.

But when I’m working with an artist, blogging is usually the last thing on their minds. But immediately it’s important to get relevant content up on your blog. I’ve just launched my new chill out music label and service so I’m wanting to build that up slowly now - except - well I kinda DO have a couple of business to run here.

So my content guys are going to be writing articles for me, just like they do with the artists using our music marketing services, laying down content on their blog to get it through that initial period where keywords are thin on the ground and google’s got no love for your blog.

Blog promotion is just one of many parts of our comprehensive service offered to develop artists and music brands online.

Now this may not be the greatest piece of music journalism ever but what it’s doing is providing that critical mass of conent. Once a few months have gone by and dozens of posts are building up with all those relevant keywords, then I’ll see the results as google sends searchers to my site, just like it sent 320 different people here on Monday.

And whats more, my staff will be using this article and slight variations of it to syndicate this article, through submissions to article directories such as www.ezinearticles.com, out to other sites where they will run this content and link back to my site, once again providing

- quality links form a trusted site

- keyword relevant links

- one way non reciprocal links

the three ticks to building links that increase google search optimisation results for musicians and bands.

And it all builds more traffic to your site, and when they start coming it’s time for the artist to become more involved - OR, more likely, you have to start paying us more because youre starting to take off and you need to start developing deeper and more authentic engagement however we can without demanding any more from the artist than we have to.

The point is - more fans coming to the the artists blogs to engage - and when they get there, do you think reading some crappy article is what they’ll be doing first? Not if we can get those big propositions up front!

Sign up for email - get access to free stuff - WOW look how crazy this artists vibe is - AMAZING!

Seen the latest video diary? Photo gallery?

We’re on a sliding scale here from the small time to serious new music artist material.

Articles like this now, on the web and on your blog are just tiny breadcrumbs leading to the big house made of candy.

So lets get you on the road to candyland - sounding and looking like an inspiration - and leave the details, such as blogs, bread crumbs, a thousand online marketing angles - to me:

Matt @ Kurb kurbpromo@gmail.com

Our $600 Music Marketing 3 month campaign covers just so damn much -including developing your blog and posts for it. There’s just not that many places you get that kind of comprehensive personal service and attention without having to roll out big money.

WIth our online artist management service you actually get the marketing department you would on a small label. Except now the music industry is all on you - are you going to back yourself or let someone else push their brand forward with new music marketing strategies?
Here’s an article one of my writing team has provided for my “chill out channel” blog to start building up the density of content and keywords I need, specifically chill out music. but more niche terms such as free chill out music, free chill out music download, and free chill out music mp3 are also going to be terms i’ll be gunning for.

Please note I have not edited it or touched it in anyway - this is the standard of regular niche related blog posts we produce to develop content on a musicians blog to build it up in it’s initial stages:

With so many things need to be done everyday, it’s no wonder that a lot of us finds it hard to relax. Reports have it that about 6 out of 10 people experience stress from their works in their everyday lives. Not a serious matter? Think again. Stress can lead to many harmful diseases. And the fact that you can’t go on a vacation everyday, there’s a way of fighting stress and you can have it in the comfort of your own seat, it’s called music.

With the benefits of chill out music in you hand or rather in your ear, fighting stress is as easy as turning the radio on. And remember don’t be afraid to dance with the music it’s good for your health. So feel free to chill.

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Need help setting up and developing your aritist blog as a means to connect and engage with fans?

It’s all just a part of our comprehensive online music marketing and artist management packages.

Contact me, Matt @ Kurb - kurbpromo@gmail.com

So, great day on my blog today with 320 uniques so far - that’s my best day ever!

And when somethings working in online promotion, well you go for it! So what gems of wisdom can I impart about music marketing and promotion on my blog today?

As I said, I’ve been blogging for 20 months now and now I’m seeing real traffic. If we’d got your blog to 300 unique visitors a day then we’d seriously be expecting 3 email sign ups and building a 1000 strong email list within a year.  And an email list with 1000 willing names on it is the beginning of a serious music business.
But today I read a couple of articles about the decline if the CD and the devline of music industry revenues in general.

Same old stroy really, nothing to get worked up about.

Except I make most of my money from CD and DVD duplication so it’s got me thinking about my own advice and having faith in the power of your brand to serve as a platform for monetization even as we move into an era where entertainment products and service have an ever more intangible value related to the association with the artist and their artist brand.

I don’t know what I’ll be marketing in 10 years from now but I’ll be buidling positive and engaging associations alright, whatever we end up selling or however we make our money, it’s goingall going to flow from that - positive engagement and experiences.

Also, this, from a guardian article questioning the conclusion that downloads are responsible for lost music industry revenue:

But the reality is that nowadays, one can choose between a game costing £40 that will last weeks, or a £10 CD with two great tracks and eight dud ones. I think a lot of people are choosing the game - and downloading the two tracks. That’s real discretion in spending. It’s hurting the music industry, sure. But let’s not cloud the argument with false claims about downloads.

This is the writing on the wall. Providing is all about being useful and fulfilling a need.

Especially when I’m talking about ideas for creating revenue, what exactly is your plan to get more involved with your music in the burgeoning gaming industry?

How are you going to be a starter on that track?

Let your non existant label deal with that? Or that guy who tries to act like your manager?

Look I’ll tell you how I run my business. When I get an idea to make money, I put up a few blog posts and a new page up on my website. I say - this is what it is, this is how much it costs and from then on it’s just as many convincing, reassuring and persuasive arguments I can make to sell the deal.

So . . . are you making this information available? Have you put forward this proposition so that you can start connecting with the gaming industry and software developers? Are you posting blogs about this in particular, are writing specific tunes and creating content to engage with this specific and tiny but intensely valuable part of your potential fanbase?

But then I could just as easily turn that on it’s head.

You see, if a computer game is now becoming the standard unit of entertainment consumption, how are you using software to develop your brand?

There’s a whole raft of ideas there for creative people.

NIN nails had their Iphone app. Fall Out Boy had an online game but it didn’t engage me at all because I had to make a character and I couldn’t be fracked. Bored already, yo.

Meanwhile on the other side, I’ve seen marketers develop free software and apps as tools for the purpose of spreading links and engagement. For example, a toolbar app that updates with feeds from your band . . . gives you instant access and engagement with that fan as soon as they open their browser.

Again, this comes down to authentic engagement. Is this product - whether free or not or whatever it’s role in the business model / proposition - is this product actually going to be useful to my fans so that it provides engagement?

Is it going to be a branding exercise like a video, a chance for fans to explore and engage with the message and values of the band?

Is it going to have some viral novelty factor that makes it spreadable?

Hey it’s your game. And all you have to be aware of is that the game is changing rapidly and new rules are emerging. What is going to give you the edge in connecting and engaging with fans?

And if people don’t want to buy CD’s and no one wants to sell them because everybodies buying games . . . and those games are gonna be pretty shitty if they’ve got no decent music on them.

Economics is a funny thing. You see now, even more people will want to make games to make money, so more projects will be underway over the next few years and more investment will be put behind it.

And more young guys or amateurs coming through with their own ideas will establish clout - and just like you, they’ll be looking to build strong partnerships to enhance their brand.

so if a the gaming industry is where the money is going now, how are you going to be getting in on the action?

Interested in comprehensive online music marketing for bands?We provide online management and marketing services to arists, musicians and performers around the world.

Contact me, Matt to talk about building your music brand online - kurbpromo@gmail.com

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Interested in comprehensive online music marketing for bands, musicians, performers, entertainers - etc? We provide online management and marketing services to arists, musicians and performers around the world.

Contact me, Matt to talk about building your music brand online - kurbpromo@gmail.com

What else have I been up to?

Also read another article”New Business Models or No Business Model?”

I think what Gerd is saying here is that conditions  are constantly changing for music businesses so it’s essential to stay flexible.

That’s why I put so much emphasis now in building the brand because whatever value proposition you’re trying to leverage to generate income, if your brand is strong its easy to change up and do something else if you’re smart. If people are coming to your website because they’re coming for you and to get your content, then it doesn’t matter what you’re selling as long as it’s a sweet deal and that’s what branding is all about.

So when you’re talking about “no business model” it doesn’t mean come up with some cool thing that everybody loves but would never pay for. It means right now, we just worry about engaging as many fans as possible with consistent and quality content - and as long as you build a smart platform, then later you can think of a thousand ways to give those people more of what they want from you and get some money.

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I have also been doing some copywriting for a lot of artists, mainly working on their landing page copy.

So all I can say about this is I often take this stuff for granted but a lot of artists when left to their own devices come up with some pretty terrible shit when it comes to describing themselves and doing that thing I always talk about: engaging.

Need a whole post on this - I guess it’s part of this “anti-branding” concept I talk about - this condescending “hey buy our t-shirt” and “check us out” kind of vibe doesn’t always create the right impression. It’s extremely subtle the art of branding, but you don’t see that many big bands being all like “yo check us out”.

I could name a dozen crimes in such copy or bio’s related to artists but I’ve got to get back to work.

Yes you’ve got to be compelling.

Some of the shit I read in artists bio’s or blurb, honestly, why in the HELL would I care about that? I want to hear about some crazy shit that’s on another level. It doesn’t matter what game you’re playing, you can always take it to another level. You’re trying reach people here so you’ve got to stand out - and stand out meaningfully, not just by having some novelty factor or gimmick that’ll get old fast.

Also, this concept of social proof again, you’ve got to demonstrate immediately that you’re real and not a pretender, and how that is conveyed very much depends again on the value of your brand and your target niche.

It’s great if you tell me where you’re from and what acts you are a little bit like because those are important searchable keywords. but don’t tell me you’re taking the world by storm unless you’re in the habit of summoning hurricanes and have the pictures to prove it, otherwise the main impression you create is that you’re in the habit of summoning bullshit, and trust me, that market is a little saturated.

I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re sitting there and you dont have good ideas about how to build your brand by producing compelling bio’s, intros, blogs, blurbs etc. then you might find yourself in need of my services, because I provide a comprehensive service for all your online marketing needs, and if you dont have great copy that engages visitors when they first arrive to visit you and hear your music online then it’s going to be that much harder to engage to the extent that you can actually build fans.

You should email me: kurbpromo@gmail.com or phone +64 27 684 8250

If you’re Interested in comprehensive online music marketing for bands, musicians, performers, entertainers - We provide online management and marketing services to arists, musicians and performers around the world.

Contact me, Matt @ Kurb to talk about building your music brand online - kurbpromo@gmail.com

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If you are writing chill out, downtempo, jazz, dub, new age, ambient music and you are looking for online music marketing, promotion and artist management you have every reason to contact me, Matt @ Kurb promotions at kurbpromo@gmail.com because we are already experienced in working in this broader genre.

What if I told you I started a label?

You’d think I was crazy, right? But then if you read my blog you know I always have crazy ideas, and that I’m totally cool with that because lots of ideas, including the failed new music marketing forum idea (one idea that revealed itself most recently to be a failure) are amazing experiences to get a grip on whats going to work and what’s not.

A lot of dreams in the music industry, and believe me, big dreams are not always your friend.

But diligent experience and experimentation – now that’s why I decided to start a record label – well actually it’s my second now, I actually have run a label back when I was young and stupid – but this time I’m doing it completely my way.

Which you know is going to be different. I mean seriously, what is the point of a label these days? Blog posts have asked this stuff before, and it has to be stated that somebody has to perform the business end of the music industry equation. Nothing is more obvious at this time than that new music business models are required to keep musicians in business.

So it doesn’t matter what it does, as long as it makes money as a business. That’s the point of a label.

So my new label is designed to make money.

How the hell am I going to pull that off?

Well it comes down to the Brand and the Business Model.

The brand is going to be related to the niche – in this case, Chill out music.

That’s why I’ve branded it “Channel Chill Out” and www.channelchillout.com.

That’s pretty straightforward. but once you isolate the niche in this way – like any collective or group would do when planning such a strategy to network and partner in building a brand platfrom – you have opportunities to build a business model.

Initially, I don’t see how or why we would go about trying to sell recorded music. Although that is the traditional role of a label, that’s now been updated to providing the brand platform from which to launch new artists, which is nothing new in underground music – that a label will represent a high quality brand.

So basically we’re affiliating with artist who want to provide high quality content through our site or our “channel” in this case. They aggregation of relevant and high quality content is the basis of the labels launch, and obviously we want to be able to provide free mp3’s that are quality.

In this way, the concept of being “signed” comes down to simply providing an mp3 that we can make available free in perpetuity.  This structure exists simply to build the brand that we provide free chill out downloads.

But how will it make money? Well in seeking to provide a brand platform for artists to make content available, you actually provide a promotion service. In fact it just so happens that I provide a range of music marketing and promotions services, so in this way, the brand is able to monetize because it provides a platform for me to offer a niche marketing service just for chill out artists – just for certain high value customer.

That way the platform build by a community of musicians can be utilised by providing access to a ready made fanbase who are already using the site to collect free material.

Then the third stage of monetization happens at a more mature level for the brand – and again is niche related, given that the genre of music lends itself to soundtrack work, as well as making products available to fans, we would directly target a more lucrative market for our products – mainly licensing and publishing opportunities that would net acts significant pay outs, as well as providing a platform for us to distribute products specifically for this market.

For example – royalty free CD’s that are sold with limited licensing and publishing rights for broadcasters and media developers. I believe such products can sell for $99 a CD, but of course on the internetthe competition in marketing such a product id strong so you would definitely be relying on the brand power behind the label to create attention for alternative products and offers that could be leveraged off the brand and it’s audience.

I often talked about affiliate marketing as a basis for monetizing artist and entertainment brands. Now, I get to experiment with how these offers could actually work.

If a fan is willing to purchase a $40 product knowing that $30 income goes back to the artist as a commission AND that this continues to allow the artist to provide new content, this could be offered as a conditional proposition – buy this product, get all this band stuff free . . .

My only job is to find affiliate products that are high value for money that the chill out niche would be engaged by. Instantly I’m making brand connections to high value concepts like environmentally friendly products and lifestyle products.

But we’re now dangerously into dreamland territory. I’m doing this my way, which means right now, we’ve got perhaps years of hard graft ahead adding content to build the brand.

Luckily I already have 2 artists on my roster Ganga and Daniel Masson who do chill out stuff, and I also put out a chill out compilation myself back in 2006, which also taught me a lot – and means I already have a product to promote and sell. So from my experience I know that this product has a market – restaurants, cafes, other commercial spaces, also need a product like this. So by targeting that market – focusing on that niche that we know already exists means we already know specific things about why these people are going to purchase this music and what they’re looking for.

So from putting out that CD and my own local connections including NSU & Beat Dungeon, Stray Theories, JR Kong and Bluevibe Studio there is a little bit of depth I can draw on if I need to sure up more content.

This is what a sound business model should have.

Let’s just go over some major points:

- Clear niche, not being clever – it’s chill out music

- Initially, artists are invested in a give/take relationship with the brand. Free music builds the brand, the brand builds exposure for the artists. This means most of the commitment up front is for a long “gestation” period where I use my skills to slowly build some equity in the brand.

- The brand provides a payback for my work by promoting and providing a niche platform for other artist services I offer. In the niche of Chill Out, I am already building an audience and a platform for artists in this genre to participate and benefit from the commitment already established.

- I already have a flagship product to promote and monetize – my compilation album – though I’m not dependent on this in anyway, it’s just a manner in which to develop and experiment with profitable propositions and sales.

- only LATER once the brand has solid support – built of course by the advantage of tapping multiple content sources through our artists – that we consider the next stage of monetization by identifying niches for our products and targeting them with products developoed especially for their needs.

Do you need music marketing services? I offer a comprehensive service covering all your online needs. it will only cost you $600 but in most cases it will take us AT LEAST 3 months to put a platform together and begin a campaign. If you want a personalised and comprehensive service that is affordable . . .

3 month online music marketing package // $600

Email, me Matt @ Kurb it’s kurbpromo@gmail.com

INCLUDES:

Myspace + Social Media Marketing
Web +Graphic Design
Online Promotion
Youtube Promotion

Email management, blog promotion AND MUCH MORE

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Alright. What have I been up to in general music marketing and promotion activity?

Well yesterday I watched “Before the Music Dies”

And I thought it is fairly important that some cultural values are retained in the music industry but thats for the artists to worry about - my job is to help artists make money in the music business.

#This Blog: Ironically after writing a recent post on the validity of blogging for musicians I’ve started to recognise that as this blog continues to grow incrementally due to the articles I post every week or so, I believe it is actually beginning to impact on the amount of leads I receive for my music marketing and management services.

Long story short: Blogging is a strategy that will pay off only if you’re willing to put oh like 2 years into it. Come October when I would have been blogging for 2 years, that time investment may be actually paying off by then.

#content Promotion: Suddenly my youtube videos have kicked into life, then there’s twitter and the new search service Bing, which have all contributed to a dozen visitors. This is all pointing to the fact that when you’re building up content online then you never know how connections are going to come together, but you’re building up to a powerful critical mass.

whether it’s Google or some kind of viral marketing ripple, you’re going to start building interest with relevant content and interactions, and it’s just as likely that dozens of small content items - videos, blog posts, various feeds and streams you make available - will contribute to your eventual emergence as an artist as it

Moral of the story: take your secondary content seriously. Develop a strategy to make secondary content available.

#artist development: I am now branching out with my own music a bit since I basically have established a career for myself I thought it would only be natural to start applying some of my skills.

I’m blogging regularly now on my music but I’m not promoting it, because long term, what I’m actually trying to do is build a really confident voice so that fans will engage with my writing and my blog, while I’m getting use to the idea that I have to be posting new content about twice a week, and on twitter, everyday.

If it goes well, then I might start talking about what else I’m doing but it comes back to that point that if you can’t build a blog with 200+ posts on it, then it’s probably not worth wasting your time, while I’ve put 50 posts on that sucker and I haven’t even mentioned it.

This is the long game.

#chill out label - yes I have started working on developing a chill out music label basically as a personal project to develop and apply some of my own ideas about how music brands can be developed and then monetized.

You can read more about it by following the link above.

# Video Camera: Got me a new video camera so right back into getting on with my videos. Which is also what you should be doing. Make yourself useful to your audience, and make yourself a video.

#gigs: Did a couple of gigs this weekend. You got to remember that often to have a successful night it’s obviously important to make the best effort to allow the performers to perform at their best.

Often performers who can’t perform or are having difficulty performing can’t perform at their best and it effects the gig. People expect a decent show.

With events - understand your performers, understand their equipment needs, understand the venue, maintain what everyone agrees to be a standard and you shouldn’t have a problem.

Something blows up or falls over just at the moment when everyone is starting to dance and enjoy the band is going to have a negative effect on the vibes at the event.

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Need Online Music Marketing? It’s $200 p/month, and you get a comprehensive service.

email me, Matt - kurbpromo@gmail.com

Just watched this doco “Before The Music Dies” through following a link on twitter.

http://www.beforethemusicdies.com

It was a good watch, but it did raise my sensitivities because I see this a lot in the music blogosphere - a lot of passionate musicians and music lovers who make a big deal about all these lofty values emobodied in music as an art form.

Which is all fine, but I thought we were talking about business. Well, I am anyway.

If you expect to make money and even a living or a whole career out of music then you’ve got to be ready to embrace the business side of the equation. Otherwise, just sit in your home and enjoy and play, and don’t whinge about the loss of cultural values like old people always have when you’re not willing to address that value as a commercial proposition.

But that’s just me. To me, it’s my job to work out where to make money, and y’know how you make money?

By giving people what they want.

There’s a lot of emphasis in the documentary that talent has been forsaken in favour of other more superficial elements, but at the end of the day who ever your fans are they want to contribute their money where they see value. And value comes in a complete package.

The musician has grown into a cultural stereotype. For kids and grown ups alike, the musician is a modern day hero, I person who follows their dreams and speaks from experience and with true, uncompromised spirit.

To me, in the 21st century, a musician - as a commercial entity - is no longer a dude with a couple of great songs, or a phenomenal player. In this era of hyper connectivity and interaction, fans are looking to music and musicians the way they always have, except they are demanding more.

This doesn’t mean essentially you have to be phenomenally good looking.  As long as you represent an essential character that is authentic then you’re going to be fine, because let’s face it, the world has become a very superficial place, and many people see music as a refuge where they can connect with a lot of the feelings that are glossed over by every day life.

So yes, the music industry has changed, but rather than being reactionary and alarmist and suggesting that music itself is somehow in danger from rampant commercialism, I see the opportunity for artists to embrace their brand as one of the central elements they provide in a commercial sense.

Great songs are only one part of what makes up a powerful brand. A powerful story, powerful messages, powerful images, these are all essential parts of what fans embrace about the music they love and the musicians they follow.

If the world is really tired of teenagers with work done or rappers that have been shot 9 times then you’re going to have to come up with something that’s going to compete with that in the hearts and minds of your audience, so that they become willing and receptive to the suggestion and persuasion of them to engage in activities that will lead you the artist, and what ever commercial music business model or interests you represent to create revenue.

Do you need music marketing services? I offer a comprehensive service covering all your online needs. it will only cost you $600 but in most cases it will take us AT LEAST 3 months to put a platform together and begin a campaign. If you want a personalised and comprehensive service that is affordable . . .

3 month online music marketing package // $600

Email, me Matt @ Kurb it’s kurbpromo@gmail.com

INCLUDES:

Myspace + Social Media Marketing
Web +Graphic Design
Online Promotion
Youtube Promotion

AND MUCH MORE! Get in touch today!!!

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