Just doing some reflective new yearsy type posts for Music Marketing Management and decided to put my current thoughts on Twitter into a seperate post.

It’s better for SEO that way, and to bring twitter freaks from both my twitter network and search queries from all the twitter fiends out there.

There are a lot of people going nutty on twitter, and it shows no sign of relenting in terms of the buzz building around this site. What really blew me away recently was a big nerd face off that went down between some of the most heavyweight bloggers around the issue of “twitter authority” - how google and other big web platforms should recognise what and who is important on twitter.

And this debate really drove home a few points about twitter for me and of course all of social media development. All these power geek influencers are now swarming around twitter, and the pick up that myspace got in 2006 is starting to kick in with 5-10,000 new memberships and new random followers for me everyday.

But the thing is back in the myspace days, you could develop your brand extremely powerfully, you could do relatively what the hell you liked, and thats why the thing blew up. I built this business and several brands solely on the back of Myspace in 06-7.

Twitter doesn’t allow you room for much branding. You get 1 picture, a background, a tiny little blurb and as many 140 character statements as you please. If a picture says a thousand words . . . well you can do the math how many “tweets” (140 character messages) you’ll have to send out to start building a brand on twitter.

If no one knows who you are outside of twitter than no ones going to care inside of twitter.

That’s why I always saw twitter as a place where a lot of powerful “alpha” brands and personalities could herd their online tribes. The less powerful your brand to leverage such communications, the less of a powerful tool it is.

Now that’s where I’ll have a lot of garden variety “social media experts” (which I refer to as “goody 2 shoes bloggers” or “chris brogan fanboys”) disagreeing with me.

One thing that twitter taught me is that “Social Media Expert” or “Guru” is basically become a by word for “online dilettante”. Hey. Call me a spammer, call me a blackhat, but DON’T call me a “Social Media” anything. I wash my hands!

[a RECENT Chris Brogan post suggested why social media experts should avoid trying to sell their services to one another. OH MY GOD CHRIS YOU ARE A GENIUS!!!!! HAHA ROFLCOPTER]

They’ll tell you that twitter is all about the conversation and “listening” and adding value and basically being a big cuddly internet nice guy a la darren rowse the problogger.

And that’s fine for some people, especially if you’ve already established your “nice guy” value adding social media brand and you’re doing well with it.

But take a leaf from my book. I provide value, I’m building a strongly differentiated brand, I don’t work for a boss, I can say what I like, and I don’t have to kiss up to people all day on twitter to build a brand that will get me more business. I provide value. So I have a business.

So we havent really moved on that far from Myspace, Facebook etc. stop dicking around looking at pics of girls and messaging your buddies and get off your arse and create content that actually matters to people!!!

I’d rather be me knowing I can afford to be a bit irreverent with my brand because demand for my high value services is so solid, than spend the day slithering around twitter looking for crumbs like a lot of people seem to do.

If you do read my blog you’ll read about how Twitter (and being censored from Music Think Tank) really forced me to start thinking about my brand.

Because I’m not one of these goody two shoes social media expert blogger guys whose going to write you a prescription for how to build revenue just by being nice to people and hoping they’ll feel sorry for you or something,

My whole angle is that you should get on the net and start making cash. Take me, I’m trying to stay away from too much twittering and blogging because I’m losing money - that time could be spent on more profitable activities.

But hey. We’ve all got to contribute value through content if we’re going to get anywhere.

Don’t be an asshole about monetizing of course, being pushy, self obsessed andself aggrandizing.

But don’t muck around being all touchy feely warm fuzzies on the net - I mean maybe you want to quit your job, or feed your family, or maybe you want to ride round in your late model German Automobiles with beautiful models like me.

So if that’s your dream, get on with it!

The choice is yours. I mean It seems everywhere right now, everyone’s always complaining how they’ve got no money.

Oh there’s a recession on. It’s just going to get harder.

How come I don’t have that problem?

I think playing the nice guy and giving out ridiculous amounts of value is great if you’re raking in cash from it.

If you’re leveraging it.

If you’re not raking in cash, then you’re possibly not on the right track.

I always know I’m on the right track because I just check my bank balance.

Now getting back to branding on twitter, I called myself MattNZ on Twitter, which turned out to be a real dumb to rock the NZ brand because one of the best things I’ve got from Twitter is interaction and insight into whats going on locally both in the music scene and the internet marketing scene. And connecting with heaps of kiwis through twitter has been cool for me on a social level since I’m couped up in front of the computer on my own 10 hours a day with only musicians to interact with who obviously have a very limited understanding of internet marketing practice.

If you’re a New Zealander and would like to follow some local guys who are active and intelligent social media users and do the whole interacting with the community thing in a way that makes sense

Check out Simon Young at Ijump.co.nz by following him on twitter at @audaciousgloop

Or Ben Young at www.bwagy.co.nz by following him on twitter at @bwagy

They are not related but are both smart “young” social media / internet marketing guys, and whats more, they’re working on a twitter ebook.

Being the “nice guy” and embracing the community and the conversation isn’t quite the brand I’m moving forward with.

Creating value and creating revenue, and leveraging the digital environment, and perhaps being a little bit cheeky because I know no one can fire me - that’s my bag.

To me, it’s powerful because it differentiates me and gives me a unique angle from all those people trying so desperately to build up there social capital.

The reason I point to these guys is that one of the most important things I learned from Twitter is basically what not to do. I don’t want to explain too much, just give you some examples of my experiences.

You’ve got all these “experts” banging away about the “conversation” and “listening” and what do they do???

They don’t follow you back and just spend all their time talking about themselves.

No wonder NZ is such a joke in digital developments if these people are supposed to be our experts. Where were they when I was creaming it on mysapce in 2006?

I don’t follow everyone back because I’m not interested in all the newbie internet marketers that follow me, because I know the canned headset that they’ve pulled out of the latest stupid internet marketing info product or coaching course they purchased out of desperation.

On Myspace we were able to use “automation” powerfully for promotional purposes. But so were the spammers which killed myspace, and on Facebook, the stance is aggressively anti spam, which has carried over to twitter.

People don’t like weirdos hanging around.

Automation killed myspace in the end, for that reason, and the experience users took from a spam filled myspace, you can’t use heavy automation or spamming techniques on Twitter, it’s just not going to get traction.

You either have to be a nice guy, or build reflective value elsewhere, like me.

Because you’ve got all these clueless social media noobs piling onto twitter because all the big boys, and every two bit internet marketing guru is telling them that it’s the future when really the only thing it’s serving is to keep them within their favourite faux guru or A-list bloggers sphere of influence.

To me it’s very revenge of the nerds. You’ve got all these uber powerful nerdlords trying to enforce their heirarchy of popularity on twitter, it’s just like being back in high school, all the biggest bloggers back each other, and all their all their vapid, clueless little followers, the ones that leave hordes of sycophantic blog comments on their every post, maintian the established hierarchy.

Do you know why there were no A listers on Myspace? Because they are generally ugly nerds with sticks up their butts. But Twitter solves that problem. I wonder if all the hot girls on myspace are on Flickr now?

There are a lot of people on twitter talking out their arses. I mean, it’s amazing that they made it as far as twitter, to be honest, and haven’t learnt a few basic clues about social media. As I said, I was a professional “myspace expert” there for a while, which taught me so much just about social media etiquette and how the whole thing works. I often say that facebook was a great big fail for me because I was so busy working on myspace I totally missed the boat, as I was so ingrained into the myspace way of doing things.

And that’s why I point to twitter as possessing the ability to educate new social media users and new social media marketers and musicians and small businesses of course - how to do social media right because it’s as I’ve always said:

Myspace, Facebook, Twitter . . . the names in the evolution of social media change but it’s still the same journey, it’s all part of the amazing revolution in communication that’s taking place and changing all the rules around commerce that is based on communication.

I’m not exactly a soft seller, I like to make money, you know that, but Social Media is about leveraging the access and communication you have to create positive branding messages that make your followers want to get involved because they’re engaged outside of whatever you’re peddling.

In fact it’s a great opportunity for musicians to jump on and absolutely not try to make money or sales at all because it’s about providing positive value, winning support, and creating rewards as a result of that.

I mean, hey, I know a whole lot of faster ways of making money, but you;re a musician, you MUST keep it real, create goodwill, create positive word of mouth, garner the support of the everyman.
Though I must say I often lament that unlike myspace, there are no girls throwing themselves at you on twitter. If you know me personally, you’ll know not only do I have a passion for online marketing, music, monetizing, and German automobiles, but I am also a keen and avid supporter of the modelling industry, and there are very few models on twitter.

So I say, Twitter never got me laid, but I get a whole lot more done these days!

And I guess that’s a big part of Twitter’s appeal.

Streamlining the processes of communication, the environment and the execution of communication is evolving and twitter is very much a part of that.

I used to lose WHOLE DAYS tuning up girls on myspace. Sure, I’m obsessed with the twitter buzz as much as the next geek, but it never takes more than an hour out of my day.

As I say, this branch of social media is going more into the streamling of social media based communication.

It recognises stuff, like that we’re busy. We’re all busy, and we’ve all got stuff going on.

When I see links around twitter, what I see is really efficient communication. I don’t want to break it down too much, but posting links which you found valuable is a huge part of twitter. It’s about sharing and interacting with shared content in more meaningful and more efficent ways.

It’s about people like me curtailing some of my worst excesses - huge posts like this one!

So, there you have it. Get involved and participate in Twitter for sure, but don’t let me make you think it’s a tremendous idea because the real value available for aspiring artists and creatorsis still pretty dubious but there is no doubt of the opportunity to learn and experience how social media is developing and whatever you think of twitter as a platform, the social media experience is still rapidly developing as one of the most defining aspects of 21st century culture.

Need devastating online music marketing strategies and coaching? Email me, Matt @ Kurb. kurbpromo@gmail.com to find out how access to 4 valid credit cards could have me coaching you in online music marketing and revenue for all of 2009 - FREE. That’s worth US$2400.

Alright, kicking off the year at music, marketing and management, with some SEO website promotion material, and just covering some basics there.

Got some posts coming up for the New Years - more reflective thinking on online music marketing for 2009, and on twitter which gets it’s own post.

And of course a big power post coming up interpreting my top 10 online marketing strategies for artists and musicians in 2009.

But right now a bit of standard website marketing fare. You might recognise that I didn’t write this article.

I’m running a rapidly growing business and I don’t have time for leveraging my blog by committing as much content as possible!

But I do have a team. I have writers, I have SEO people, I have graphic designers available to me so that important but boring stuff gets done.

Graphic design isn’t THAT boring but seriously, projecting a professional standard of imagery is the only way to stand out from the amateurs who are wasting hours every night doing their own photoshop and probably not doing that great a job.

My vision for building a team wasn’t JUST making money. It was MOSTLY about making more money - this IS me we’re talking about - but also creating more leverage and just being able to do more and move quicker.

This is 2009, if you’re not leveraging what you have then you’re gonna find yourself dramatically outstripped by the flexibility and innovation of the competition who are using digital technology to the fullest.

2009 is the year that innovation goes beyond a neat idea and provides challenging value propositions that shake the old model.

With the access to the experience and resources that I have, I’m finding it a challenge to recognise how an artist with just great material can compete with an artist who has an organised digital team behind them and the strategies to leverage that team for value.

I’m going to talk about that some more soon.

Let’s read up on 7 Secrets to search engine marketing and website promotion fail:

Having a website is like owning a newspaper; you’re not running it for yourself, your running it so that people can see what you have to offer. In order to achieve this, there are tons of things that you’ll do to ensure that your site becomes popular. Search engines can help your sites popularity grow and if you use this to your advantage then people will come to your site. But sometimes you’re site is on the fifth page in a search and you wonder “why did that happen?” Well here are some of the mistakes you’ve been making

1. Running a highly animated or flash based website. Not everyone likes flash websites, they take a lot of time to load up completely and sometimes the animation isn’t worth the wait either because it’s not what their looking for or it just sucks. Also, it’s not everybody that has high speed internet connections. These are the people your highly animated sight will piss off greatly. A lot of web professionals try to avoid flash pages and even Google prefers to put the text based websites before the flash websites. Check it, its true.

1. If you don’t pay attention to the data on the web. Some phrases are very popular searches on the web. If you pay attention to the web you’d notice that some keywords are particularly popular among lot of web researchers. When you pay attention to this you can use this to your advantage. Adding these keywords to articles in your webpage will help improve traffic to your site.

1. Hoard links. Remember what mother told you, “a good turn deserves another” if you don’t provide links to other websites on your site, they’ll definitely not be sending anybody to you and your site won’t grow. Provide links to other sites who have information similar to yours and they’ll return the favor and with interest too as your website’s ranking will go up in on the search pages.

1. Don’t strategize. If you don’t keep developing strategies to stay on top, one day someone will come up and down you’ll go. You must continue to research the most popular keywords and add them to the posts on your site.

1. Don’t blog. Blogging is a way of inviting people to have lunch at your site. If you don’t have this, those that have will move ahead of you as people would rather go to a place that’s more inviting than one that’s just plain and old fashioned and is not frequently updated.

1. Provide links to spam sites or virus infected sites. If your site provides links to spam sites, you’re in big trouble. People are afraid of getting viruses on the web as it is, a site that links to spam sites or virus infected sites is not at all the best way to invite people. Plus Google will not encourage people to come to you’re site. Your site will come last among searches.

1. Change pages without providing redirects. This is bad. How do I find what moved out yesterday. Make sure your links are updated as you update your site.

If you’re making these mistakes then you better get your house in order… And Fast!

That’ll be coming up.

But there’s a few points to consider however.

Musicians have other opportunities that small businesses don’t to create a positive brand that resonates and motivates your “tribe”, which in a global, digital environment can be skillfully managed to create income.

I’ve still got a post coming up about that also, more meaty strategies to leverage an audience for music revenue.

But you must have a strong email list to do this, for a start. Which means a compelling strategy or proposition to get those emails.

But the one thing small businesses do have down where musicians are falling short online is that the average small business website may be just as crusty and purposeless as yours but at least they’re experienced in producing and fulfilling sales.
What have you got that’s so special I’ll want to fork out for it? Oh those plastic things, those CD’s. Do I really want more plastic stuff cluttering up my house?

No, I don’t, I want the experience! I want something to happen to me that’s awesome, not some bit of plastic I end up standing on and scratching beyond use.

Remember that tune “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus?

Listen to that guy raving in the comments on hypebot.com!

That guy nailed it. We’re living in changing times people. Again on my small business blog I held up my top 10 list of 2009 marketing strategies and compared against different business models.  Advertising, Search, and Social media are going to work differently for different acts and the demographic of their niche audience.

Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.

Music acts have naturally powerful brands. Small businesses are organisations that have commodified a product or service successfully.

A business needs to develop it’s brand to engender loyalty, a band needs to understand how to turn brand/fan loyalty into revenue.

So when I get an email asking about my  music marketing services this is what I’ll think straight away.

This is the stuff I want to know about before I even think about myspace promo, youtube promo, social media SEO, PPC, online campaigns, etc.

1: bringing presentation to a professional standard

If your website looks crappy then you’re obviously trying to build some kind of sympathy/authenticity vibe. That works. Look at me, I’ve had crappy presentation. But watch what happens in the next month or 2 when my presentation and brand value comes up to standard. Put it this way, you can get a start, but you’re not going to be giving up your day job unless your website is AWESOME.

2: compelling proposition (free mp3 etc.)

I’m doing well because my propositions are competitive. You can get value from reading my blog for free, and I reckon you should read my blog for at least a month or two before you think about emailing me for online music marketing service. About 200 new people come to this blog every week, and at least one of them always wants to spend money. And if they do spend US$500 to start a 3 month digital coaching and music marketing campaign with me, that’s a lot cheaper than the $US2000-3000 you’d spend on a credible US based company.

PS BY FEBRUARY PRICES WILL BE US$600 FOR 3 MONTHS. I’M ALREADY PRACTICALLY FULL UP FOR JANUARY, I’M JUST GETTING READY TO START HIRING AGAIN IF DEMAND KEEPS UP.

3: outcome focus (selling things is not always the easiest path immediately, I tend to encourage email list building initially)

We’ve already talked about why list building is so important. I’m likely to be blogging all year about those little extra income streams that are available, because I know you’re going to be a lot happier just with an extra $100 per week.

No maybe you don’t want frickin dating site ads and bloody “free ipod” nonsense on your site or going out to your email list. But it’s lucky I’m smarter than I look because it’s something we can play with.

Look, I’m just gonna go start getting a bit of money there, then I’ll come back and we can talk about how you can make some money without looking like a dick in front of your fans who are your priority.

4: online marketing

We can do myspace promotion, we can do youtube promotion, we can hit the social media hotspots, we can do big roll outs over blogs, forums, classified sites, we can do SEO, PPC, we can reach out to influencers, we can leverage our own content with distribution strategies, blogs, p2p

Marketing. It’s what we do.

We can do it all. But seriously what’s the point if you’re not able to convert that attention into profit at some stage?

5: leveraging content (blogs, video etc.)

Are you even writing your damn blog? I’m in a state of slef flagellation over my lack of progress in video.

I MUST drop new youtube videos in the next month if I want to retain even a scrap of respect in the online music marketing scene.

Except I’ve got that gen X thing going on where I’m oh so precious about my brand and want to wait until my skin is clear and my hair looks right. Sheesh. The 00’s are almost over and I’m still reaching for the airbrush???

Do. Your. Content.

Keywords and Memes. Do it. Do it. Do it.

So there’s a quick checklist there I run when starting up with a new client.

What’s the moral of todays story?

You may think you’re ready for marketing.

Because you think marketing is about lots of people knowing about you.

Well it’s not! It’s about making money. So you can continue to pursue what you love and build on it.

But you’re not ready to start making money from music online, you only think you’re prepared. We’ve got to get you prepared, and that could take 3 months on it’s own!

And I’m really glad I have great designers, promoters and writers here at kurb to help artists get to a place where they are actually successful, because just having great songs, or a pretty website, or something free to give away doesn’t mean much until you work out how it’s going to pay.

Email me, Matt for more info - kurbpromo@gmail.com

Yup, bouncing off 37 signals again even though they are a software company.

I think it’s a great endorsement of the kind of convergence we’re experiencing through digital concepts, and this idea I talk about abandoning the attempt to install traditional retail business models online - IE selling CD’s and T-shirts or single downloads or copies of anything from a web store - that we can draw so much valuable inspiration from another industry.

You know I’m a great fan of recurring business models for musicians such as membership sites or subscriptions.

Mainly this comes back to the high/low proposition stuff I’ve been talking about. I always encourage artists to fevelop high value propositions but at the end of the day this is where the comparisons I continually make about your business in the music industry and my business in the music marketing industry cease to add value due to the practical nature of the service and products we deliver.

While I may have 20 “fans” or in this case, my audience, my clients who will pay me $500 for a month of my services or a one off job . . .

You as an artist need 2000 fans who will pay you $5 for a month of services or access to a one off product or service.

This kind of financial propositioning

And to be honest, from my experience in business, dynamic propositions that can be leveraged will win the day. Nothing works better than a great product at a great price with a real frictionless experience . . . that is you just make it so easy for someone to get their hands on the goods.

Thinking about new ways where you can give as much as possible to your fanbase in return for as much as you are able to get back is a powerful strategy. Some ideas will fly, some won’t.

Remember my idea for the Plasticast? A free giveaway cd of unsigned artists sponsored by local business?

It was just one of a million new ways you can leverage value. All you have to do is think about it.

In this article, 37 Signals talks about the benefits of a model where you collect a little bit of money each month from a large pool of highly engaged users.

Just think about how it would apply to your music/website as a fully accessible body of content that you are committed to maintaining

And remember that this is still fresh, new perspectives of value

At 37signals we sell our web-based products using the monthly subscription model. We also give people a 30-day free trial up front before we bill them for their first month.

We think this model works best all the time, but we believe it works especially well in tough times. When times get tough people obviousy look to spend less, but understanding how they spend less has a lot to do with which business models work better than others.

There are lots of business models for software. Here are a few of the most popular:

• Freeware
• Freeware, ad supported
• One-off pay up front, get upgrades free
• One-off pay up front, pay for upgrades
• Subscription (recurring annual)
• Subscription (recurring monthly)

Cutting new before cutting old

Typically people look to cut new spending before they cut current spending. They’ll often put a freeze on anything they aren’t already paying for. Eliminating new costs is easier than eliminating existing costs.

For example, if they’ve been evaluating something new, they’ll put that evaluation on hold. If they’ve been able to get by without it they can likely continue to get by without it. Or if there’s a big upgrading coming up they’ll stall or just consider it unnecessary.

But if they’re already paying for a service they use, they’ll likely continue using that service. They may downgrade to a cheaper plan, or try to negotiate price, but if it’s still useful there’s a fair chance they’ll continue using it.

The problem with one-off selling

The problem with one-off selling is that once the customer pays you once, that revenue stream runs dry. In tough times, when people freeze new spending, less new customers means less new revenue. And in extreme cases, you may see no new customers at all. That means no new revenue at all. So if you have no new customers for three months, you have no new revenue for three months. If you don’t have reserves, going dry for three months could sink you.

The semi-benefit of annual subcriptions

Annual subscriptions are better because you still have the potential to generate revenue on a regular basis without picking up new customers. However, since annual renewals are initially more expensive than month-to-month renewals, companies may think twice about re-upping. If they do re-up, they’ll likely negotiate harder and threaten to leave all together if their price isn’t met. They may be bluffing, but in tough times it’s especially hard to risk losing a customer.

The benefit of monthly subscriptions

Since new spending is often cut before current spending, you may not see any new customers for a while, but with a monthly subscription business model you’ll still be earning regular monthly income from your existing customers.

If you have 5000 paying customers at $10/month, you’re sill seeing $50,000/month in revenue even though no new customers are signing up. And while some existing customers may start to cancel to save on their current costs, you will still have money coming in every month. Cash flows from monthly subscriptions are among the most predictable flows you can find.

The other benefit of monthly subscriptions is that the entry cost is lower for new customers. An annual subscription may ultimately be cheaper than a monthly subscription, but the initial outlay on an annual subscription will scare a lot of folks away in a tough economy. People are looking to save money, and annuals can do that, but they’re thinking short term not long term. Short term savers reign in tough times which is why monthly subscriptions are safer for all involved.

How about a combo?

Some companies offer a combination of plans. Monthly, annual, or big up front “lifetime” subscriptions. As long as monthly is an option I think they’ll be alright. At 37signals we don’t have an advertised annual option, but you can make a lump sum deposit into your account once you’re signed up. This way you can put in $500 and not have to worry about seeing a credit card charge on your bill every month. Some people like this because they can spend whatever remains in their annual budget this year and get to use the product “for free” next year.

Just a reminder

The ideas above aren’t rocket surgery, but they are a reminder that the type of model you offer can have a significant effect on your company’s viability when the bad times roll.

Kurb Bonus: Matt’s pricing structure for an artist’s membership community with full access to content

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lifetime 09 pricing: $199   2010 pricing: $199

1 year 09 pricing: $99   2010 pricing:$75

6 months 09 pricing: $75 2010 pricing: $60

3 months 09 pricing: $60    2010 pricing:$40

1 month 09 pricing: $40   2010 pricing:$25

1 week 09 pricing: $25   2010 pricing: $10

1 day 09 pricing: $10 2010 pricing: $5

Sorry to tell you this, but…

1. BIG CHECK BOOKS STILL TRUMP BIG IDEAS - Just ask any music start-up. You’d think that the major labels would embrace every great idea they could find to help save their struggling businesses.  Nope. Labels are inundated with so many “great ideas” and are so desperate to help their  bottom lines, that the only ideas they take seriously are attached to fat checkbooks. Don’t forget this is a business, and business I’ve learnt is all about staying alive in it. There’s gotta be a pay out coming, you can’t sail a sinking ship forever, and guys who stay alive in music learn to be hard bitten business people. We don’t back young kids with big dreams because it feels so right like in a movie, we use our business knowledge and experience to leverage talent. So get smart about it and don’t expect anyone to come to your party unless what you’re doing just totally blows people away and you’re taking big risks to back yourself and make big plays. What I do doesn’t blow people away but do you think I sit around here waiting for a leg up? Do I whinge waiting for my funding? No, I get out there and drop content attached with propositions which fly and get traction.And one day you’ll be like me wondering why the losers don’t just quit complaining and start getting on with it.
2. EVERY TIME MUSIC IS LICENSED TO AN AD SUPPORTED MUSIC 2.0 SERVICE THEY’RE PROBABLY BREAKING A CONTRACT - How many record label or publishing contracts do you know that say “Its OK to pay me a tiny fraction of projected ad revenue every time my song is played / downloaded.”

Again this comes down to high vs. low value propositions. Cents add up. But very very slowly. This is ancillary revenue, if you’re depending on these kinds of trickles, you’re not going to last long whether they’re legitimate or not.  Build High Value propositions.

Whats these high value propositions that I keep going on about? Here’s an example the “NIN ghosts” deluxe collectors edition for $300, only 2500 copies ever made. Sold out in 2 days.

= $750,000

Swweweet!

on this blog, I don’t care if you have credibility like NIN or Radiohead or you don’t like Tila Tequila and The Crazy Frog. I am interested in succeeding  with new models for doing profitable music business, exchanging rewarding musical experiences that people perceive as valuable for financial returns.

3.YOU CAN’T DO IT YOURSELF - There are not enough hours in the day to return emails from all of you Facebook friends, update your dates on Eventful, post new photos on Flickr, edit the expletives out of that backstage video before posting it on YouTube and still find the time to write songs, record them and then play them live. It takes a village to raise a child. It take a team to build a career. Start building one today.

Of course you need professional support.  Let’s start with these 3 people

- A music producer who helps your music to sound as complete as possible.

- A music agent who creates opportunities for you to earn money providing music services such as performances and licensing

- A music marketing manager such as me who is not only experienced in music business but has a proven track record of online earnings based on internet marketing knowledge

The real issue here is identifying  when you’re ready to begin serious music promotion and marketing. Your music career is now indistinguishable form a small business, so what you’re actually attempting to do is become profiitable as quickly as possible in orderto leverage what existing revenue streams you can create. So get started, read my blog for real value and online monetization strategies, build up your repertoire of content, build your content mass so it develops gravity, make some mistakes, then start getting business minded about the tasks you need to outsource.

Our service for US$500 for 3 months is designed to be comprehensive and affordable but I don’t wave a magic wand and make people viable music industry stars. That takes work. And so far I have met very few musicians who are grasping the future. That’s not to say that they aren’t successful or that they need me, but they could just as easily start outsourcing and earning more online, as to focus more on their core activity - writing and perfroming music.

So many music industry bloggers are wrapped up in the old ways. I don’t have to blog. You don’t have to play gigs or put out an album, sure it’s a great start, but if you’re doing something else that’s already working keep doing it! I write this blog because it helps me sort out my ideas for making money online in music so if you’re not, then keep reading.

Only do stuff that’s not profitable if you truly enjoy it and think it’s contributing to your growth as an artist.

Have you seen that Gerd Leonhard slide of the horse pulling the car? Always thought that was a great metaphor.

Using the internet to sell CD’s, downloads and T-shirts is not a long term sustainable model for optimum earnings. I’m a businessman, so I will always assess the opportunity to develop proven revenue, but selling physical products such as merch and CD’s is not a proposition that can be extended quickly.

When I launch a new proposition I want to know immediately if it’s going to be a winner. Like within days. Because I’m not going to start selling kurb t-shirts, because if I do, I’m not going to be able to change my mind next week and scrap it.

Things happen fast online. Culture is moving fast.

If you take an internet marketing approach to music promotion and management, you certainly wouldn’t ignore the opportunity to create revenue in traditional ways, but this sort of activity certainly wouldn’t be the core of any modern internet marketers business model.

It’s been almost 18 months since I wrote my first article for the purpose of sharing and leveraging targeted content online.

The title of that article was “your music is worth nothing”. And it described how we were living in a world where copies of music, whether stored on computers or sold as physical product would lose significant financial value over the coming years.

This was a description of how changes taking place in the music industry, mainly due to internet based digital technologies, meant we had to prepare to start shifting the way we approached the business.

That was 18 months ago. Early in the year I wrote about how 2008 was all about 2009, that we had this year to brace for the impact of these changes to be felt.

And what I predict is that all this recession/downturn talk is just going to accelerate things. People have more access to content, information, stimuli through the internet than ever before they are going to be hungry for value and they will continue to demand it.

So real opportunities are going to start to emerge for those who have been preparing for them, not just the token novelty quirky viral video stuff.

But I’m definitely running into a few unexpected problems with the rebranding process here at the music. marketing. management. blog.

A big part of the new flavour here was being unapologetic about building successful strategies, strategies that I know work, which are internet marketing strategies.

I build income for artists and their management online. That’s what I do. I don’t care what you look like or what you sound like, I create strategies to prepare musicians and entrepreneurs to make money in the future.

I still hear a lot of artists who have been struggling and lamenting about the state of the music industry, and I still see a lot of music industry blogs who are not showing much practical support for artists, that’s why I decided to just focus my blog on revenue strategies, and the strategies I use to create revenue are based on solid internet marketing practice.

When I’m talking to artists now I tend to gloss over the myspace and youtube stuff.  Because I say - you can pay me $500 to get your myspace popping and thousands of people to watch your video on youtube but then what? Where are you going to take that?

Yes, but Matt, people come from myspace and youtube and they buy downloads and merch.

Yes, but that’s an old model! Selling T shirts and downloads is only going to take you so far.

If you don;t have decent web property, you’re not building an asset that you can leverage in so many ways it’ll take me the next 6 months to get through it all on this blog.

We haven’t even got into the email management stuff with aweber properly because we got too many artists with ratty websites that don’t do stuff we need them to do!

It comes down to this, if you have no understanding of internet marketing practice you’re going to have a really hard time making your band viable, and it’s going to be a lot of work explaining it to you. You should keep reading this blog, I’ll try as much as I can to keep it simple.

But this is what I’m hearing talking to artists. That they want me to do myspace and youtube. And I’m like sure. What about your website. What about your blog. What about your mailing list. And I’m drawing blanks.

I haven’t even got started! We haven’t even started about leveraging recurring income streams which is a blog post I’m about ready to publish. I’m about to launch into all this heavy internet marketing stuff and building multiple niche web properties because I want to share solid revenue strategies with artists and they don’t even have a clue about the kinds of income that can be leveraged from high quality traffic that you commit to building.

Artists must get business minded about their propositions. Don’t have super premium high value products/services?

Get some! Do the math. You make 10 sales of your CD on your website. You make $100. I make 10 Sales of a 3 month consultancy package. I make $5000. Maths lesson over.

And relying on Myspace is so totally like living at your parents house. Time to face the real world and get out there.

It’s very concerning to me. If I was really committed to artists, it’s most likely I’d have to pull away from how heavily into internet marketing this blog is going so it was easier for musicians with only basic understanding to engage with, but I’m not going to feed you the same industry blog stuff about how to get gigs or get signed to some kind of deal if ultimately it won’t help you, if such things are even still relevant.
It makes me feel that more than ever I need to choose my clients, if you’re not prepared to attempt to understand internet marketing, then you’re not ready for the internet where the mainstream music industry is now increasingly situated. It wouldn’t surprise me if in years to come I go full circle and swap consulting for actually managing and developing acts that I felt were exceptional, by leveraging the brand and financial capital I’m now building up now I’m getting some momentum.

I still feel really committed to the clients I’ve worked with up until now, for all the bands who put faith in me, even though I’m not completely sure where all this going, I’m totally indebted.

But did I mention how everything becomes a lot easier when you’ve got the money to pay for it?

When I was a musician, all I wanted was a bit of coin to keep the wolves from the door. To be able to afford to be able to keep doing what I was doing. And that should be easy for artists who are deliberate in applying internet marketing to their music promotion in 2009.

Standby in the next post I’ll be talking about recurring income streams - different forms of ad revenue and affiliate offers.

NEED ONLINE PROMOTION SERVICES AND STUFF: CHECK IT OR JUST EMAIL ME MATT, kurbpromo@gmail.com

• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• Auckland Posters - Design and Print
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic/Web Design
• DVD copying
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions

Well unofficially I’m on Holiday now, but not really.

I have scheduled a break from cd duplication and dvd copying projects as well as any poster printing and distribution activities for the next few weeks until I come back from a week of gigs in the south island on january 19th.

I’ve also kicked off an official kurb promotions blog. Why? For SEO silly! More content, more mass, more gravity, more authority. Also by attaching the blog to kurb.co.nz, as a .co.nz, it should be automatically indexed as nz based material, even though the server i’m using is in the US.

I added a blog to kurb for the same reason you would to any site: I just want to click publish to add to my content mass, full of juicy links. Not to all that webmaster web design business. In time I will also use it to make announcements like specials and such, and do link outs to clients and other projects we’re involved in.

In the meantime I’m not only going to be talking about rebranding, but right now I’m also looking at recurring “passive” income. Rebranding and recurring, baby.

Today I bought some new monitors to help with my music, money is great when you’ve got the time to enjoy it, that’s why I’m so interested in recurring income streams, because I got to stop working so hard!

That’s coming up soon in the next post all about building recurring music revenue, so you can relax a bit more and not have to slave over constantly promoting your band online just to sell a few cd’s and downloads.

The party I played at last night, Futurebound at Carpark here in Auckland hosted by the Mashup Mafia, was a raging success, it was a free charity gig but there were actual queues down the street to get in which is pretty rare in it’s extremity for gigs I usually play at.

Quick reasons why?

- this is not only usually a regular “low rollers” thursday night, but they have had over 4 of these special Low Rollers gigs featuring an international act free of charge. Word of mouth about this high quality free brand has spread from the first few parties which were all well attended and executed.

- week before christmas, people are off work and want to party before joining their families, but being pretty tight on the pocket this christmas, a free gig would go down.

- The guys from the mashup mafia maintain relationships with people all over the local scene. There were a lot of performers on a 12 hour bill, a lot of sponors and connections with media,

So last night was a great success, I’m not one to speculate on the profits but it’s safe to say 400+ would have drunked a fair amount of liqour over 12 hours and the takings would have allowed for the venue, the promoter and the headline acts to get paid despite the gig charging only a donation toward charity.

Also, for those who put on that event, there will be massive goodwill generated by word of mouth regarding the queues down the street. If you know anything about the music industry you should know . . .

Money and Success only come before Work and Value in the dictionary! hoho

Don’t expect the world on a platter until people start hearing around town that there was 50 people out standing in the street for 20 minutes waiting just to stand in a sweaty, squashed venue and see your music!
Just some thoughts. In music you’ve really got to attempt to provide exceptional value to breakaway from the pack. If you’re being unexceptional just for the sake of a handful of sales on itunes, forget it.
I can’t make you into an amazing musician. I can only help amazing musicians to find ways to make actual money. More on that next.

• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• Auckland Posters - Design and Print
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic Design
• DVD copying
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions

THE WORKS. Online Music Marketing starts from $US500 for 3 months. email kurbpromo@gmail.com

Well lets have your youtube account looking halfway decent for a start, it’s not much chop having this wonderful video if it doesn’t look like your serious about presenting it. Youtube is run by google it’s teaming with google juice and Google runs on text! So add text! Lots of it.

You don’t want your youtube completely barren so fix that - start by pulling stuff off your website if you have to.

You want your Myspace looking good. A professional band wants to have a professional looking myspace that looks like they take themselves seriously. Looks like they’re music probably shouldn’t be free, I mean what exactly makes a difference these days?

The you can get started on some promo, with a decent myspace that looks good and makes sense that
should start kicking over. It’s like any space, give people a reason to be there and show them what to do. Get their emails.

Do some tweaks when events take place - when a new video arrives, new downloads, other juicy content bundles that are full of goodies.

Like software and apps. Forgive me this is so a whole other post, but as you see your web designer now, so you will see the guy who designs your custom software and apps in the future.

There’s stuff to do. let me put it this way if I’m promoting some commercial emo or hip hop, I’d be a lot more blunt with my approach, but with grown up music, it needs a slightly more sophisticated approach, so we’ve probably got a lot of stuff to get straight, I hope you can bare with me.

With kids, they’re either into it or not and that’s the end of it.

But where the local scene is mature even by international standards, you have to attempt to grow your
reputation and rapport with the existing context.

Myspace won’t be a problem if your work and presentation is of a standard.

But I do like to be a little bit clearer on my research for youtube, it’s worth making the effort to
really target the audience, there is going to be an interest in new high quality material, and I feel we want to get thwse peoples emails so you can sell them things later on, and leverage it to create more buzz, where there is this established scene to feed off.

Again, this sophisticated market expects free music. Maybe they expect bootlegs and remixes or other interactive 2.0ful experiences.  That’s something we’ve just got to negotiate how we can with.

How you say? I said! Get the emails! Get me a few hundred emails, anyone got a few hundred people on email? Show me those emails then we get to work.

When we get to auto responding those fans down the endless funnel of delightful digital products, we got fan management revenue locked up.

Check me out I’m so fly I don’t even collect emails, but you not fly like me.

So your plan is pushing your traffic where exactly? To itunes? To the video for paid views?

Where’s the high value prospect? That’s why I fly, because of the value of my prospect is high!

You feel me?

Your awesome video you’ve spent too much money on is there to engage so that the target is excited about what they’ve seen.

What do you want them to do after the video? Buy the track? Download free material? Submit email?

They want to sign up for email and they might participate in actions that result in revenue that you will solicit by email and a later time!

This is where I focus on a landing page - which fulfill all these specific outcomes.

We herd them up toward this page where we know should to they happen to have not previewed the video, they can do so, there’s purchase buttons, your social network buttons, your download for the free mixes
you’re offering, plus email sign up.

This is where it goes down.

Otherwise where’s your written content, new release, new video? we need to have that “press release” type
copy prepared as I will be formatting that message for different social media - blogs, forums, groups etc.

Each of these platforms needs to be spammed engaged in the most appropriate manner.

But you need to start, as always with  your keywords, don’t forget based around artists you sound like.

Same with onsite youtube promotion, you don’t want to run around youtube spamming the place, there’s a place for spam , it’s called myspace.

If you’re clever and experienced like me, you use keywords when automating promotion on youtube so you only get highly qualified matches. Otherwise seriously you’re just spamming the place.

Again with your youtube, your copy, you’re going to want to mention artists and labels that you’re distinctly akin to in sound and vibe, and just all the normal press release stuff, if you can do quotes . . . anything I can work with!

So what do we do with our writing? Where do we put it? How do we get it to all the different social media, how will people come to watch our video?

How do we make the landing page with the email and the buttons?

How can we autorespond with deligtful funnels?

Well you can wait around and keep reading or you can get your wallet out and email me, Matt

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Our US$500 3 month online promotion packages include:

Overall web strategy
Online Music Distribution
Website promotion [SEO] and development [monetization]
Myspace promotion
Youtube promotion
Blog set up and promotion
Digital coaching
Email list management
Access to special promotions
Graphic Design

Redesigns are underway and I’ll be relaunching a few over the new year.

My artist community at new music marketing is now almost completely free of spam and nasty porn, and I’m leaning close to posting some articles in there about two relevant subjects to this topic, because that’s where I put all the juicy stuff.

Starting crazy amounts of junky trash blogs and spinning your written content for links.

I got almost 70 blogs going now. They’re like my pawns.

If you want to make money online with music you really have to get into an internet marketing space. Or well your management does anyway. You need to own more of the net.

You need to be absolutely hammering those niches, if you want to make money you may have to accept one website may not be enough. One blog. Not enough. Perhaps you’re the manager now, managing your web properties, filling out your niche and looking for the breakaway.

But not really. Really, your niche sites are your pawns, moving forward into new niche territory to cover the strike power of your flagship sites.

Put it this way. If you have a christmas album, you need a christmas album website. Sure it only makes  money once a year but that’s good, it’ll be the only time you have to update it.

What other niches can you cover, do you cover more than one genre? Maybe you need to think about creating and developing satellite sites.

You’ll probably want a separate site for your licensing. You’ll want separate sites or blogs for all your music business activities.

You should “ready, fire, aim,” as they say. Get started, gauge interest, and most importantly, start aging your domian, adding content, developing your concept over the months it will need to mature as an online entity - mainly of course, in the eyes of google.

Start now, grab your niche web property and start developing it. If somethings a dumb idea, get it out of your system. Just like me you might come back to a lot of stuff 2 years later and realise there was something to it, and you’ve still got the web property you established to work with.

Grab your wordpress, blogspot, live journal blogs, load your content up with keyword links and fire it out.

Get decent domains as an investment

decent domains.

Not

www.mattfromkurb.com

but something smart that people are looking for

www.cheapmusiclicensing.com

www.licensedancemusic.com

www.musicindustrybusiness.com

www.makemoneymusicbusiness.com

Last one not so much. As a general rule of thumb in web real estate, a good, searchabe 3 word .com domain can always sell for more than you bought it.

Slap a wordpress blog on it and 10 original non duplicate posts and leave it for a year, that should be worth $US100.

.info’s are good if you’re looking for decent keyphrases but don’t have the perceived value that .com’s do.

Get into article marketing, start at www.ezinearticles.com. Request link exchanges with relevant sites, and join up with our music marketing forum, it’s still free and for one there’s a huge list of do follow blogs you can comment on to get decent one way backlinks.

These seo strategies as well as access to graphic design, myspace promotion,youtube promotion, blog promotion, email list management, website and blog set up and development as well as foundational online music marketing strategy are all available on our packages starting at US$500 for 3 months. email me Matt, kurbpromo@gmail.com

Checking out lots of gurus.

Now one guru who I’ve been getting a great deal of knowledge off recently did a series where he pointed out that the beginning of any internet marketing campaign begins with sales.

It doesn’t end with sales, it begins with sales on a website. Sales of a product, a service . . . a fixed fee for some bundled content, any or all of those future music business models we love here on this blog.

This is why I’m doing the work I am with artists, building music and artist sites that are going to work. Because unless you can prove that you have a website and you are selling a product, and that sales are actually happening , there’s no point launching an online music marketing campaign just to have a whole lot of people come to your site and not buy anything.

If anything it should help you understand perhaps people want to buy your products or experience your music in a more interesting and accessible way than a CD.

And understand that we do want to sell things. We do want to leverage propositions, we want to make money online with our music. BUT we can also understand that it’s not easy anymore and just getting those email sign ups means we’re still moving forward towards music monetization.

Sales are hard. But emails are something.

This is the thing, old guruface reckons you don’t even need a product. Once you implement solid online music promotion tactics, you can read the market, and gauge the potential receptivity of a product or service you may only still be developing. It’s clever stuff once you know what you’re doing with a strong email list and traffic flow to your website.