Market and Manage your music online

Hi, it’s Matt from Kurb we offer affordable and coprehensive online music marketing promotion, artist management and campaign strategies - including email fan management with autoresponders - one of the key ways on not only manageing fan interaction but also turning those interactions into revenue.

It WILL increase from $200 to $250 p/month for our services at any time soon as enquiries are coming in thick and fast - so don’t delay your chance to get professional support for developing your music business and a great price of $200 for 14 hours work over a month.

KURBPROMO@GMAIL.COM

Alright we’re getting well and truly stuck into 2010 and since I’m getting stuck into music marketing campaigns for artists now, I’m going to kick off with a blog post because it’s a great way to get ideas turning over.

I always use my blog as a “think tank” where I can process and evaluate ideas and their application in online music marketing. It’s just no good going off getting your teeth stuck into an idea only to think wow . . . gosh if only I’d thought ahead.

It’s important that artists create good fan newsletters. So what? Well if you have an awesome newsletter and your promotions are definitely effective then you’ll have no trouble advancing propositions to your established fans each month and racking up sales.

Some clients have been with me for awhile and their now moving into the intricate details of email marketing. They have a small fan base building on a professional platform such as aweber.

That means once a fan has signed up, we can set up aweber to automatically mail fans at regular intervals with a new message. And if the new message feels authentic and has persuasive, engaging material then there’s no reason why that fan won’t consider the types of sales propositions you’ll be including in each newsletter, but it’s crucial to keep the newsletter lively or else you’ll get people unsubscribing.

1 free song is a good start but what about a reward for staying on the list for a year? Motivate, persuade, compell, encourage the fans but do it creatively, create the conditions with an artistic approach to present your propositions in your newsletter so they don’t FEEL like a hard sell.

1: NO TIME SPECIFIC REFERENCES

Time specific references must be eliminated unless we’re doing a specific one-off mail out.

No merry christmas, no happy new year.

This is all about mastering the art of the autoresponder - once we are getting to the rinse and repeat stage with this we’re adding a newsletter that each fan will receive each month after they sign up so once you get fans signing up, everything else just kind of does itself.

The email management sends out the designated newsletter with the offer of the month enclosed, you just watch for what sells and what doesn’t to decide where you’ll take your next set of propositions.

But what baout stuff that’s inevitably time sensitive like announcing gigs? Well then you could either do a one off mail out OR I recommend you have a link in each newsletter encouragig fans to quickly check out what

Perhaps in future it will not be hard to embed scripts into the newsletter that display upcoming dates!

You see how this newsletter stuff becomes so powerful? Fans are being engaged and interacting, you’re not even doing anything, with a email newsletter we set up to go out to fans with this stuff 6 months ago, nothing to it!

2: DON’T APOLOGIZE

Don’t apologize! It’s not your fault youre a busy musician but also . . . remember we’re playing with the perceptions of the audience - the whole idea of this autoresponder is to eliminate those painful gaps where you drop off the radar for 3 months and your fans get distracted and engaged elsewhere.

No need to say sorry or imply your absence. The autorepsonder is here to ensure you’re never more than 1 mont h from their minds.

3: PERSUASIVE, COMPELLING, ENCOURAGING, ENGAGING CONTENT

So it’s all wrapped up in a feeling. Your newsletter has to be a work of art as much as anything else. Exciting, dramatic, detailed. You want to get people excited and wanting more. So you need plenty of more detailed and persuasive information about what you’ve been doing that builds anticipation and I think it’s important to note you don’t want to launch into a sales proposition straight away.

That’s why I encourage musicians to post a blog a week then for the monthly newsletter, you’ve already got 4 ideas to deploy.Then you’re able to make some pithy or perhaps ponderous chit chat before ramping up for the propositon.

4: THE PROPOSITION

You need more compelling info about the proposition itself. A lot of artists I work with start by pushing little content package deals, 10 songs for $5 20 songs for $10 or so on. Obviously you may already have a CD but this varies it up.  It’s going to get old if every month you’re like . . . I’ve got a CD please buy it. What if they already bought it? huh? huh? What then? More products. More experiments to otry on your newsletter to find ot what works for your audience and what doesn’t.

5: MORE SALES TECHNIQUES FOR MORE SALES

Employ a few basic sales techniques. So the audience wants to know in exhaustive detail all the benefits of what they’re getting. Don’t hold back. Then, underneath that main proposition and your sign off, you can have a number of the other propositions you’re pushing y’know - you’re using the newsletter as a vehicle for the range of propositions you offer your fans. Which of course yes, includes your CD.

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At Kurb we do Music Marketing Campaigns! Online Advertising, Social Media, Search Engines, Video promotion and production, Websites and Design - and of course you’ve got me, I know all about branding and online business models so you can work out the best way to get some money out of what you’re doing.

Email: KURBPROMO@GMAIL.COM

Well it’s 2010 and I’m getting started with music marketing campaigns for my artists signed up to our music marketing services.

When we’re talking about music marketing campaign strategies for 2010 you may know some of the strategies we use to drive fans toward music:

Google and Search Rankings:

If you have at least a year or two to build your blog like I have plus you use our search engine optimisation and particularly link building strategies then you’ll get hundreds of visitors a day, and they’ll see all the stuff on your site, if you’re always talking about interesting stuff then they’ll email you and sign up to your newsletter, you’ll interact with them as pretty much an equal.

And they will become open to the idea of buying your stuff.

Online Advertising

The most important point about online advertising in fact the whole point of this post. You can spend the money on getting the fans to your page but whats going to happen once they get there?

They’re NOT just going to be overcome by your genius and shell out $10 for your album and trot off again. This is subtle relationship marketing stuff. You’ve got their intention, now get them involved in a way that doesn’t insult there intelligence. Then, you’ve got a basis on which to sell them stuff.

Social Media Promotion

Social Media is easy to understand, but it’s hard work if you don’t find a groove you can work. We can get in their with our tools, but whether you can use tools or you’re reliant on organic strategies like you are on facebook, if there’s nothing for people to see and gain some concept of what you’re pushing then it’s not going to seem real, it’s going seem like it’s your hobby on the weekend that’s not what fans want to buy into they want the real deal.

It all leads to one thing.

And the main thing I find myself talking to clients about is them asking about all these online promotion strategies and when are people going to start arriving in their droves to check out this new artist.

Well I’ve been doing these campaigns for years now and most often the artist wants results but they’re not prepared for results.

Picture yourself with 1000 crazed fans around the world. Does your websote look like a website 1000 people want to visit twice a week? Is there new stuff to check out twice a week? Do you just like, throw down a video or a blog and post it online when you’ve got a spare hour during the week?

Is there a big newsletter each month packed with everything that’s been happening in your wonderful world?

Do you answer 10 emails a day from fans who write some of the craziest, annoying, awkward, bizarre emails everyday . . .

Are you prepared for the kind of occupational lifestyle of a modern online professional musician?

Or . . . in 2010 don’t go spending all your money to get people coming to your websote and myspace just to hear your fancy new song, when your website or your myspace, facebook whatever, doesn’t look like the sort of place fans want to go and find out about something that will blow their mind.

If you don’t have the brand, and you don’t have the content then your visitors will see an amateur and then it’s over.

I’m happy. This will keep me working for years because if your website looks like it was made in 2006, and it probably does because it was, then it probably looks old and useless and people will probably wonder if you’re even still alive.

Sophisticated surfers know what they’re looking at.

This is music man, this is culture, get with it. But then it’s still going to take you 2 years to get your site humming with organic traffic! That’s why all my sites look so bad. They don’t look so hot but people visit them, and then they email me with money to give me.

Which of course is the whole idea. Sell to your fans like I do. Email them. Get that connection going and use technology to manage it’s growth, That’s where you need us because at that point if you don’t have hte tools and the strategies you’re going to get buried, when you’ll it’s even more important that each month you can still produce great music, great videos, a great concept that people understand and are compelled to support.

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Matt from Kurb does Music Marketing. Services include Social Media Promotion, Video Production and Promotion, Online Advertising, Design, Web Development and Search Engine Optimisation. Still just $200 p/month kurbpromo@gmail.com

As for other goals for kurb in 2010 and beyond - beside developing an authoritative information product describing exactly the what and how as well the who of what I do . . .

I am looking into developing music publishing opportunities also as I am assessing parts of the market that I can address. The scheme sort of goes like this. Musicians allow me to use songs on my Royalty Free album in exchange for marketing services, and I collect the proceeds from the sales of the album to parties looking to use recordings for commercial purposes.

This is not just using your music for synching to content and advertising but also commercial spaces such as restaurants, malls, cruise ships which need permission to play licensed music. These albums are sold with such licenses offered to the purchaser exclusively.

So what you see is the example of a modern music business model. I offer my marketing skills in exchange for music from musicians who probably don’t have the resources and appreciate the music marketing services in exchange, whereas I’ve already prepared a market for a high value proposition including those songs.

Always full of crafty online music business ideas, me!

Otherwise, the struggle goes on to develop a perfectly rounded staff with skills in all necessary departments to cope with whatever demand we face this year. Outsourcing is not easy, but it’s necessary and it’ll be a big part of our new music marketing product.

I desperately hope 2010 is the year we finally get the makeover we’ve planned and we leave behind the “street” vibe inherited from our humble beginnings in 2004.

But really, that’s just a smaller part of the whole branding thing I’ve been wanting to develop, you may have noticed I’ve become increasingly frank and I guess this is part of my brand development. Not everybody is going to like what I have to say about music marketing but

I also notice a lot of other music marketing guys slowly inching their way towards business models I’ve used which precludes another strong aspect of my brand. I’m not exactly getting rich off what I know but I maintain a pretty rewarding lifestyle, and I’m still picking up speed. It’s probably cheesy as hell that I should have a picture of my sweet black BMW or against the sweet view over the city from my apartment with me all in my suit being the hardnosed businessmen but if that tells people I’m confident and assured in the work I do and it’s been a long time since I was that guy in mom’s basement charging bands to spam myspace. Which could easily be some other faceless guy you might give your money to because he claims he does this and that.

When you see my face you know I have a reputation to protect. And that all may be cheesy as hell, but it communicates strong messages that connect, and my work from there is to embellish the sentiment with more subtlety, and well, understatement.

But yeah I talked a lot about branding this time last year but failed to launch, because it’s a serious business, you’re trying to smack people in the head within half a second with a concept that they can believe in.

As I say, they don’t have to believe I’m a nice guy and I’m kind to animals and small children. All they need to know is that I do a good job, and if they give me their money they will get there moneys worth.

That’s what branding is all about and I hope that helps you to understand how important it is to your long term success as a working artist.

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Matt from Kurb does Music Marketing. Services include Social Media Promotion, Video Production and Promotion, Online Advertising, Design, Web Development and Search Engine Optimisation. Still just $200 p/month kurbpromo@gmail.com

What next for thenew Kurb Music Marketing Digital Product?

It’s always good to have a plan. I like to have a plan which is going to be good short term, and long term too. That’s what makes a good plan.

Sure a $47 music marketing product isn’t going to be easy to create in a hurry. But to me I think the value can be laid bare with a very simple outline.

I think once you’ve got your head around outsourcing and having guys overseas do all the promotion for you, that’s pretty much half of it. But you want to know which sites I use where I do everything and how I do it so it all works out. Once you know that stuff, well you’ve already got the edge over the guy who is completely DIY.

Now you just need to work out how to make money. I can’t promise anything there but I can give you plenty of ideas and some of them work for me, I’m sure one or two will work for you. You just have to be ready for it take a couple of years. That’s life.

So initially it will go up for sale as a very simple kind of thing perhaps with 2 free updates, that way every few months when I make improvements to keep it fresh and relevant, buyers still get more.

Then as I said, I can use it to demonstrate what kind of particular services artist might need from us and why, and also inevitably . . . let me put it like this practically:

If it’s going to take 2 years, then come and buy the book, take it away for a year and see if you can’t make some money, because you’re not going to make a significant amount in that period by paying us $200 p/month. But if you come to us and you’ve already opened up income streams and your promotions are already gaining momentum THEN you call us so you’re not the one dealing with all these indian and south east asian dudes and having to come up with ideas to entertain them and sell them stuff.

You bring us in to run and develop the business machine, you just worry about making your next big project a real smasher.

As for my next project, well inevitably there’s a path for me to follow in staying in music marketing just like any other rising star opportunities will find me, but I’ll still sell my little book of tricks and keep it updated.

The reality is that if you manage an act that grosses over a million a year, or even if one of our acts grows to that size market, they’re going to need to facilitate some serious online business and that’s where I’ll come in, and I’ll be charging appropriately and concerning myself with the appropriate suitability of a commercial interest in the act.

So as for the information product, maybe just the one that I’ll update, maybe I’ll do another if I think I can provide suitable value, or perhaps an upsell at a cheaper price because ultimately

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Matt from Kurb does Music Marketing. Services include Social Media Promotion, Video Production and Promotion, Online Advertising, Design, Web Development and Search Engine Optimisation. Still just $200 p/month kurbpromo@gmail.com

My main plan for the year is to finally get on with releasing my first “information product” - that is an ebook and downloadable content such as video which contains all sorts of good information

As usual with everything I do is that certain principals of online marketing are being engaged and these matter for you as an artist. You can always learn from business stuff I do online and apply it to what you do.

In this case it’s about developing a downloadable product that is really valuable, yes, it is kind of like an album, but then you wouldn’t be getting it, because what I’m putting in my product will be stuff that’s like “wow!”. Is your stuff like “Wow!”?

When you get my stuff you’ll be impressed with what you’ve got. Detailed explainations. Simple explainations, videos that explain stuff, and also that explain what to avoid, how much stuff should cost and who you can trust to pay.

Outsourcing will be a huge part of the product because hiring dudes in other countries to do stuff for you is pretty much a nightmare but if you want the edge then you’ll never do it until you understand what exactly no one else but you can do to make what you do effective and then pay someone else to do everything else.

I mean seriously how do you think I make my money? Why do think my prices are so cheap? Because dudes in other countries do all the work, I just tell them what to do because I’ve tried so many things that I know how and why they work. And all this will be in the information product, which will inevitably be $47.

It’s not just a how to, because I’m not really into that mentality. Understanding branding is hard work, you need crafty marketing bastards like me with you on that. What artists need is to begin to define the rudiments of online business, and you’ll sure understand that when I tell you how it works, then I tell you where to go, who to hire, and how much to pay them.

But at the same time it’s just one big sales brochure for what I do. Pay $47 and learn how to do it yourself, or once you understand the work involved in great detail, then decide whether you want to pay me $200 p/month to have it all done for you.

Or you can determine what you need an purchase individual services from us.

I also wanted to mention briefly the marketing strategy - very “anti-branding” - very counter intuitive. I’m not going to be pushing it in a superlative manner, I want to be completely honest about what it is and does, but more so, I want to imbue the whole sales process with a “service” like feel, as if I was selling my consultancy services, that is, you’re free to interact with me personally regarding the product and any personal concerns.

So think about it: Sure, just like an album, it’s gonna take a lot of work preparing that content, even more because all the videos and eveything is rolled up into one package. But not only does that make the product more valuable, but onselling of other aspects of what I do and services we provide is built into the product, it virtually doubles as a sales brochure for the complete online music marketing service we offer.

I talked about marketing it briefly, but it won’t be anything too different than concepts I often discuss about online advertising, landing pages, mailing lists etc. but I’d also like to discuss the long view of such a product - it’s business lifespan - coming up!

Just remember 2 things - if you want to try and sell something for $47 online, it’s got to be obviously a real big deal. A bunch of songs won’t cut it for even $9. And, get close to the customer. I created this product because I was getting too close to my customers and they had a habit of getting demanding, but that doesn’t mean you should sterilise the whole sales process. If I can help people who buy the product with free advice than I feel they’ve got their moneys worth, and as I said, everyone’s different. By spending 15 minutes looking at a band’s website and writing a quick email to make some suggestions, I feel I’ve delivered value.

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Matt from Kurb does music marketing and stuff - and this is his music marketing blog.

Email: kurbpromo@gmail.com

Oh man. With this downtime over the holidays leading up and into 2010, again I attempt to beef up my branding, and substantiate it a bit more.

People know what a shonky DIY website looks like (it’s only marginally worse than this one), and a lot of people can read the signs of a hollow online brand, of which a big one is no content. No long tail. No evidence of a backstory or of having existed in anyway before their latest release.

However it’s a bit tedious getting into the details of building a thorough brand through content, uploading, organising, embedding, tagging, there’s a lot of work to do to build that foundation that states to visitors you’re real, and you have a real stake in what you’re doing.

You didn’t just throw a band together a website up yesterday, and you can prove it.

It’s not an easy thing to do, I had this big plan for 2009 about how I was really going to push my branding forward, but business kept grinding on so there wasn’t really the time.

A big one of course is getting this blog looking half decent, I’ve got to accept that there’s going to be a proportion of visitors who are not impressed with the standard of visual communication on a blog which does not look professional.

First impressions last and all that, am I communicating much professionalism with this blog? Are you? Colours and design and functionality are all very important, but also bold imagery or at least imagery that communicates, that’s tells stories.

That’s important for branding and imapact, but of course also music websites must have visual flow. If the most important thing you’re aiming for early on is to build up a critical mass of email sign ups, then the visual flow of the website and the page where that action really goes down needs to reflect that.

So once you have your website where design and functionality work in harmony, the predominant trend I see is for all else to really be patched in but staying organised with stuff.

This is the stuff your garden variety social media expert teaches and you should be able to run this stuff yourself, merely providing your website designer with the appropriate code so they can then put it together in a suitable way with your web design.

So it’s just a matter of using the tools and understanding what features are available to take advantage of, and how the tools will allow your audience to interact with the content in their own way, on the platform they prefer to use.

We got visual content we want to upload and present, so I’ll be checking out flickr.

I’ll be looking into bandcamp and soundcloud as well as possibly reverbnation, ilike, imeem, last.fm maybe one or two others to provide the music content for the sites.

And of course youtube provides the video content that can be embedded into

Aweber is the paid email management solution I use, to take addresses for regular email sign ups.

While a wordpress blog can deliver the all purpose platform for publishing non primary content.

It’s easy to see it all comes about spec’ing your site out with the right aps and widgets to help your fans get what they need, and you’re able to meet the requirements for depth of content which provides the substance to your brand.

We can’t be sure that every fan will be coming to your site looking for all the explicit details of your epic journey as an artist but I think it’s fair to assume that when people are intrigued enough by the music and are interested in finding out more are more likely to become those essential fans who are at your core, providing that secind layer od social proof - that you are at the level where some fans are deeply loyal.

That’s the beginning of a career brand that’s strong enough to last.

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Hi I’m Matt at Kurb Promo, we help artists, musicians bands, entertainers and such market their music and content online and build new business models to stay alive in the game with modern online marketing strategies!

EMAIL: KURBPROMO@GMAIL.COM

$200 still gets you 12 hours p/month for a very limited time!

There’s a full list of services we provide; Ask about purchasing an endorsed package deal through us by credit card and get $100 worth of services from us . . . absolutely free - so you can try it out!

Had a bit of time winding down from business for the year so I thought since my blog has been going pretty good attracting at least 200 unique visitors per day, it was a good idea to drop a few posts and keep the momentum trucking along.

My blog has proved a tremendous effort, but it’s a long term endeavour, it needs to be something you chip away at for years before you get to the point I’m at where it’s actually a significant part of your online promotion.

But it’s also now that I have to face up to some of the bigger issues - I can write as much as I like, and continue to generate good traffic from google but there’s going to be other parameters that come into play, so what are some ideas to improve the effectiveness of my blog now that’s starting to mature?

Well it depends what I’m tryinng to do. Most artists I’m working with have a strategy to use their blog to build up visitors from search rankings for long tail terms, and then hopefully interest them from that point enough to solicit their email sign up for an email newsletter.

That’s a good strategy for artists tryiung to build a fanbase but I really just want to sell my stuff.

That’s where I think my video and general presentation are letting me down. People are turning up on the site and the understand I provide services but the fact that my design is shonky, marketing messages are not as concise and direct as they could be, and my video could also be much improved when it comes to communicating the core value I seek to provide through my services.

The problem is that not only is having low standard video and unimpressive design likely to put off discerning visitors, there does come a point where the pushy sales copy I use at the intro of nearly every post might come across a bit pushy to some of the more artistic types.

Yes it is easy to get sales if you only ask for them. But it’s also easy to put off fans by creating the impression that you’re just about the sale.

Obviously my writing style does not lend itself to encouraging people to comment. I guess it’s because I’m not very inviting and my tone tends to suggest that I have strong personal opinions that I’m pretty firm on.

I do welcome comments, but I’m not really keen on a huge debate, I simply analyse the work I do marketing musicians online and apply pretty strong analysis to come to the conclusions I suggest.

If you’re looking not only to get more visitors to your music blog, but also get those visitors more engaged, perhaps think about the tone and character of the writing.

Does it involve people?

Does it make invitations or appeals to people to express their opinion? Afterall this is communication studies basics I learnt in media school, you want someone to commit loyalty, then they have to feel involved by contributionand association.

Does it have a fresh vibe that fits with your brand? It’s not much good being a reknowned party band and your blog is always depressing and tedious.

you may know I’m quite into anti-branding, that is I like to put a brand out there that suggests I’m casual and indifferent because it stands me apart from typical music marketing types and their little propositions.

There’s a lot of people in internet marketing scrambling over each other and I like to project the image that I don’t need the business because when you’re good at your job like me, well you’re never short of work, so why would you do anything that compromises your personal ideals?

Well, because maybe if I had less of a take it or leave it attitude and I tempered that with some other strategy, my blog would look more compelling and I’d have more social proof that i was active amidst the community and thus putting new prospective clients at ease as to what they were getting involved with.

Same goes for you, when you open a blog up to 2 way communication, it creates the beginnings of a community on your site, and the great thing about a community is that it can grow and interact organically, you don;t need to be putting down a spend if people are genuinely willing to talk about you or answer your online voice by participating.

So let’s go over it, how could I improve my music marketing blog, and you improve your blog as a means to promote your music, once you’ve done the work of posting regularly and maintaining good search engine optimisation habits?

- More impressive and professional design standards to give visitors the impression I didn’t just slap bang something together and I am committed to high standard material

- Same goes with the video, as well as my use of the sidebars - communicate a message, sure, but keep it fresh, keep it valuable, make sure the important points are coming through and are easily understood.

- The tone of your blogs should invite readers to feel involved. Your tone should at least engage potential fans by appealing to them, think about it this way - it’s about them, not you, posting a blog saying sorry for not posting because not much has happened does not qualify as being of interest to fans, so find something, anything, that is. Have some back up material you can throw down so you never need go 2 weeks without a post.

- Keep your outcomes in mind sure, but unless you want to run the risk of sounding pushy, then you’re going to have to find more interesting ways of keeping the outcomes, the directive the “calls to action” fresh rather than grinding on about some sale you’re trying to make or soliciting email sign ups.

Email kurbpromo@gmail.com

You can hire us for 12 hours a month for $200

Or get $100 worth of FREE SERVICES Just by purchasing services through us

And pretty soon I’ll have an info product out where I tell you how to do stuff, but unfortunately you still have to do it yourself. That’s why it’s only $47

or get individual services:

Website design and set up: $147

pro bio / press release / sales page / newsletter : $47 for 1  $97 for 3

blog posts: $47 for 3

article marketing for SEO: $47 for 2

basic video presentation: $97

music video: $297 9$35)

full concept video: $497

100k views: $797

50k views: $497

20k views: $297

Email management + set up: $97

domain + hosting for a year: $47

PPC adwords campaign (includes $140 free credit): $297

Social Media Promotion: $97 p/month

Business consultation and administration: $47 p/hour

Poster / banner / flyer design: $67

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I have had my hackles raised all week by an essay from one Dave Allen - the provocatively, excellently titled ‘Musicians: Please Be Brilliant Or Get Out Of The Way’ . . .  my concern [is] at the tendency I’ve seen on many ‘industry’ blogs recently, of which I think this particular post is an example.

Dave concludes, “Musicians, please embrace the web”.

Gosh another one of these music think tank whingefests going on, stoking the fire of poor broke internet illiterate artists everywhere, but some pretty awesome comments and discussion coming through also.

Go check it out.

I think it’s quite amusing to see this backlash going on against social media and online music marketing as musicians complaining that they’re still poor and can’t make it assume that that’s because they’ve been fed a bunch of lies and falsehood regarding what works online.

I must admit I was never a big fan of the touchy feely fuzzy wuzzy social media approach that’s why back then I was just using social media to spam people, and that worked to a certain extent, back then.

Not so much any more, that’s why I favour a strategy that goes straight for the jugular of revenue and profit, once you’ve established a source of income, then you’re able to take it from there, using sound internet marketing principals, not just blabbing off on twitter all day thinking you’re going to be loved.

That’s not how business works. Sure people buy stuff off people they like. It’s not the main reason people buy stuff though, they buy it because it’s worth it. It’s a deal, and they get all kinds of good feelings from supporting an independent and committed artists work.

It seems, from where I’m standing, that everyone HAS embraced the web, and there is now a cacophony of voices all trying to achieve the same end: i.e. use the internet to get publicity, to sell t-shirts or other, more esoteric concepts such as mentions in song lyrics, and so on.  Which, as these pundits insist, is some kind of answer to the issue that no-one wants to pay for music any more.

I completely agree with this. That’s why I did begin to change tack from hardcore spamming and internet marketing towards more of that “engagement” stuff and accepting that you must execute and exhibit some kind of talent or you’re going to be seen through by any half savvy netizen as shonky and inauthentic.

That’s why I started talking about branding - branding in the modern sense is simply breaking through the cynicism that consumers instantly have because they’re used to all this nonsense. Building an authentic brand is all about breaking these walls down.

in 2009 a commentator . . . is in fact just parroting what the last guy said, is to cite Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails.  Two great bands; yes.  Two examples of pushing new, creative and genuinely innovative (if arguably gimmicky) business models; yes.  Two examples of what can be achieved with the internet if you’ve got a ready-made fanbase, a few million pounds in the bank, some staff and a couple of decades of major label marketing behind you.  How are they relevant to a band starting up today, who don’t have access to this kind of money and infrastructure?

Ouch. I have always maintained that the central issue is breaking new acts, that ultimately Radiohead and NIN nails were coasting on the capital invested initially by their labels to build their brands.

I just loved what NIN did with the limited edition $300 product, to me that’s what it was all about, shifting the business model in to something more viable, not assuming that the CD disc was the only format for entertainment brands to provide products.

To finish up a quote from the comments I most agreed with from Scott Andrew

Here’s part of the problem: indie artists aren’t always aware of the difference between “embracing the web” and “dicking around on the web.” It’s hard to describe the latter as sometimes it feels a lot like the former.

Couple that with something Bruce W. says that I believe is true: lots of artists don’t know how to be entertaining on the web. It has to be learned, just like performing on stage. There’s a world of difference between starting a blog and actually being an interesting blogger. And just like anything else, you have to put in the hours before anyone even notices.

From Mike Munro:

- quoting Dave Allen’s original article:

“Control has moved from the few to the millions of many. If dull labels and dull bands keep offering dull, flat, non-experiential product – e.g. a CD, they will go the way of the Dodo. Consider what Cirque Du Soleil provides as an experience compared to Barnum and Bailey’s circus. Or Burning Man compared to your average music festival.”

I think we can now replace ‘CD’ with MySpace, Facebook, etc. as examples of “dull, flat, non-experiential” products. If musicians believe that throwing up a MySpace profile and offering some free downloads and a few videos on YouTube is enough to be an effective promotional strategy, then there is clearly room for more innovation.

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The Edge from U2 . . .

said in an interview with Hot Press that the CD industry is “pretty much all over” and that there is “no replacement right now that’s viable.”

“It just means no one’s going to invest in music, which just means no-one is going to get tour support, record deals, publishing deals, all the rest, which is how every band since The Beatles have managed to get going initially. That feels like that this sort of parasitical medium will basically kill the host, which would not be good.”

I love reading this kind of stuff because it indicates to me how useless and pathetic mainstream musicians have become, like I said before, they’re like a bunch of music industry dinosaurs looking for a meteor, don’t they understand that a new brand of musicians who understand the new environment will just overrun their empire?

If these musicians who are too lazy to properly promote and are dependent on capital injections and massive infrastructure support from labels are starved out it will be a bonanza for little guys surging up to the top to engage

No way will you ever make U2 type money and have that kind of success in the new paradigm, but really how much money do you want? Isn’t a better chance at becoming a star a happy trade off now that superstars will be fewer and far between?

Industree Music Network, Inc., a new web-based company that centers around Social Music Sharing , an innovative online music distribution and monetization platform, launches. Social Music Sharing combines social networking, music, and the ability for fans to share in the artists’ album sales that they directly and indirectly help generate.

Social Music Sharing takes the most powerful component from traditional network-marketing based business models, the ability for consumers to share in the sales generated by the people they directly and indirectly invite into the network, and leaves the sign-up fees, purchase requirements, and aggressive sales tactics behind.

Industree’s CVO, Brandon Beachum, says, “I strongly believe the businesses that will achieve the highest degree of success in the emerging global economy will be those that understand the powerful momentum and energy that can be generated by sharing your success with the people that help to generate it in the first place. By injecting a “share the wealth” philosophy into our unique business model at such a crucial point in time when the landscape of the music business is changing so rapidly, I believe the possibilities are absolutely endless as to where we can collectively take Industree.”

Yeah, but at the end of the day you’re still pushing recordings which no one really wants to pay for anymore, and now you’re cutting in fans as well?

Look I’m all for internet marketing based models, usinf concepts like affiliate marketing and referrals but you’ve still got to have a product that fans are interested in, and you can do a lot better than focusing on recordings - focus on something your fans want to buy and sell to other fans.

Morrissey:

Even though you see the death of culture all around you, you also want to raise whatever it is you do to a higher plane, yet there is no one, it seems, who can inch the Morrissey thing forwards. As we all now know, the world of music is purely market-driven – not even youth-driven anymore. Talent or merit or songs do not enter the equation for a split second; the campaign is the thing, the campaign is what is discussed amongst the public, the campaign is what impresses the press, and the songs are never a factor. The labels will only push the “artists” that they themselves have discovered, and have no interest in the self-made, blah, blah. But my parting with Universal is not a negative.

Again, problems with the music industry really only effect those established in the old way. Unfortunately Morrissey has been dependent on the old way to get to where he is, and he’s not exactly well placed at this stage of his career to abandon it. New artists coming up however, can make their own rules, be beholden to none. If Morrissey was 25 years younger today, perhaps he wouldn’t have become such an icon but with determination and great talenthe certainly would still have an opportunity for a career in music, but an altogether different experience of it as a truly independent artist online, rather than a product of labels and record deals.

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