10 Fast and Free Strategies To Market Your Band (Without Resorting To Spamming People On Myspace)

I’ve found several near universal truths from dealing with and talking to bands.  First, almost every musician is very willing to spend a significant amount of time to market and promote themselves, which is a good thing.  Second, there is a pervasive and persistent view that the best (only?) way they can do this is by sending out thousands of friend requests on MySpace, which is not necessarily a good thing.  This might have worked in the early days of MySpace but I ask you now, when was the last time you found a band you liked via MySpace?  If you’re like myself it was some years ago (if ever).  Now, sending out MySpace friend requests is not totally without merit but for a musician this is not an efficient use of your time.  If you insist on using this strategy, hire an unpaid intern or enlist a friend/sibling in high school to do it for you. 

If MySpace spamming is not the best way to promote your band then what is?  Listed below are ten ways to market and promote your band that cost nothing and can be done with a minimal investment of time.  If an hour a day is spent pursuing these strategies then the end result will be far more favorable than twice as much time spent on MySpace.

 

Strategies Involving Blogs –

 

-       Start Your Own Blog – Twice a week write a paragraph (or more) about what you’ve been doing, what you’re thinking, what you like, what you don’t like, what you want to do, what influences you, share touring stories, ask questions, answer questions, post videos of yourself/band, share unreleased material, and engage with fans (potential and current).  Make sure your blog is linked to your website and a place where your music can be purchased.  Make sure every website you have (Myspace, Facebook, etc) links to your blog.

In 2009 the single most powerful bloc of people in the music industry are music bloggers.  If you are written up by 40 blogs then your album will sell twice as much as it would otherwise (LINK).  Music blogs are a far more powerful promotional tool than MySpace.  This gives birth to two strategies:

 

-       Build Relationships With Bloggers By Commenting On Their Blogs – Pick 10 or 20 music blogs that you enjoy and which write about music similar to the type you produce.  Read them every day and at least once a week comment about something they post.  These comments should be genuine and relevant to the post.  Make sure you leave the URL for your website but do not promote yourself or music at all.  These comments are about the blog, not about you.  Their purpose is to make these bloggers aware that you exist and that you are an interesting person.

 

-       Send Your Music To Blogs – A great place to find blogs to send your music to is Hype Machine.  They have over 1,500 music blogs on their LIST and you can search them by artist.  Search on Hype Machine for blogs that have written about similar-sounding-but-slightly-more-popular artists and reach out to them.  Send them a personalized message and do not e-mail more than one blog at a time.  Write a short note explaining who you are and why you think they would like your stuff.  This is essentially an “elevator pitch”.  Make them want to check out your stuff.  Do not attach your music but give them a link where they can DOWNLOAD your ENTIRE album for free.  Let them know which song they should listen to if they’re going to listen to just one.  Include a link where they can see your bio and/or grab some pictures.  Reach out to 10 or 20 blogs a week.  Ideally you will have already built relationships with some of these bloggers by commenting on their blogs so they will recognize your e-mail address and will give your music special consideration.  Here is some more advice on how to pitch to bloggers.

 

Other Strategies Involving The Internet

 

-       Focus Your Online Efforts On Influential Or High Traffic Websites – There are literally thousands of blogs, social networks, music communities, contests, and other music related websites.  Taking advantage of them is advantageous but can be incredibly time consuming.  Learn to focus your efforts on sites that are influential or have high traffic (these two terms are not always inclusive).  Use Quantcast to see how much traffic a website gets.  For perspective, MySpace gets about 60,000,000 unique visitors a month, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Brooklyn Vegan get between 150,000 and 250,000, popular music blogs get between 10,000 and 50,000, and smaller but no less influential blogs often get between 5,000 and 10,000 uniques a month.  This does not necessarily mean a site with less than 5,000 uniques a month is not worthwhile.  Also use Technorati to see how influential a site is.  Technorati measures how many people link to a site.  Test out a variety of music sites, popular and not, to see how much “authority” they have.  You will find that some sites have an undue amount of influence compared to their traffic.  You want to focus your time and effort on websites that have either high traffic or high influence.

 

-       Start As Many Social Networking Sites As You Can Maintain – Start accounts on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, ReverbNation, OurStage, PureVolume, ilike, Virb, and as many others as you can effectively maintain.  The more sites the better but if you are not able to keep them updated with timely information then they are useless.  Make sure every site is linked to every other site you have.  This will serve as a basic search engine optimization strategy.  This is also another area where an unpaid intern or little brother can be of use. 

 

-       Take Advantage Of Video Sites – One of the most powerful tools in finding new fans can be video sites.  There is an entire world of online video that exists beyond YouTube and bands should use it.  A fancy produced music video is not needed.  Here is a simple strategy to use: Plan to play a cover song at your next show.  Have a friend in the audience record the cover on a decent picture camera or video camera.  You do NOT need some multi-thousand dollar HD camera for this.  I use a $300 picture camera to take live video and it comes out sounding fine.  Upload this video to YouTube and at least five other video sites (some to choose from are Daily Motion, MetaCafe, Yahoo Video, Revver, Blip.tv, Revver, Vimeo, Imeem, Google Video, Spike).  Title the video [YOUR BAND] covers [BAND YOU COVER].  Tag the video with your band’s name, the name of the song you covered, and the name of the band you covered.  Send the link to this video out to your mailing list.  Do a new video like this every couple months.

 

-       Use Twitter – Sign up for a Twitter account and post something at least 3x a day.  Like with the blog, post about what you’ve been doing, what you’re thinking, what you like, what you don’t like, what you want to do, what influences you, share touring stories, ask questions, answer questions, engage in conversation with the rest of the Twitter community.  Do not use Twitter as a purely promotional tool for the band.  Your Twitter persona should be your personal persona, the man or woman behind the music.  Make sure you link to your website in your bio but don’t overtly hawk your music.  Maybe once or twice a week casually mention something about your music and provide a link.  There are many fine articles giving musicians advice on how to use Twitter such as THIS ONE by Ariel Hyatt. 

 

Other Strategies

 

-       Read “Tribes” by Seth Godin – Buy this book, read it, think about it, read it again, and then act upon it.  Start your own Tribe and lead it.  I could write more but the book will do a far better job than I of explaining this idea.

 

-       Give Your Music Away For Free – Everybody gives lip service to the idea of “viral” marketing but rarely seize upon the easiest and most effective viral strategy open to them.  Of everything you can do, your music is the thing people are going to be most willing to pass along.  Not some dumb video on YouTube, not some silly contest.  Do not attempt to make money off your music because it has little, if any, monetary value.  Instead, sell elaborate packaging (like the In Rainbows boxset did), a connection to the band (such as the Trent Reznor signed, ultimate fan affirming Ghosts boxset), or a souvenir (a CD-as-a-concert souvenir).  Read further about how Trent Reznor gave away his Ghosts album away for free but still managed to make millions without compromising his integrity. 

 

-       Make Amazing Music – This should go without saying but in the marketing process so little attention to it.  The most important part of marketing is to have a great product and the most effective marketing and promotional tool you have is the music itself.  The better it is, the more marketing and promotion will take care of itself.  If your music is not amazing, why are you promoting it?  Create something compelling and, to borrow a line, people will come. 

 

 

 

Does Music Have Value – Follow Up

This is a re-write/rephrasing of something I posted two days ago.  I realized my phrasing was way too broad and that I was ignoring the non-monetary value of music.  My argument was that music has little to no monetary value.  Hopefully this is now a little more accurate.

 

Music is now without monetary value.  This is a controversial statement and I’m sure many will disagree with it on the basis of both personal conviction and economics.  I believe I can address the economic objections and I hope I can also sway some to reevaluate their belief that the music they create, sell, or buy has a monetary value.

 

The reason for the “worthlessness” of music (and I say this in a purely economic sense and I am not referring to the personal value music holds for many) is its infinite supply.  In a manner of minutes (seconds?) I can find and download almost any album or song online for free.  Putting aside the legal objections to this action (and since 95% of music downloaded is done so illegally, this objection is largely irrelevant), this essentially infinite supply of music renders it without a monetary value. 

 

This has several implications.  It does NOT mean that it is impossible to make money through the sale of music.  However, the days of selling albums or songs at 128kbps or 192kbps are rapidly drawing to a close more and more people awake to the notion that the supply of music at these bitrates is infinite and that paying money for them is a silly proposition.  The economics of scarcity and abundance are worth examining.  People have stopped paying for music for the same reason people don’t pay for air.  It’s everywhere and free so why would you?

 

Except people do pay money for air, in certain circumstances.  If you scuba dive, you will gladly pay good money for air.  Of course, the value in this situation does not come from the air itself but from the packaging and delivery of the air.  In short, air = worthless.  Air in a tank when you need it = valuable. 

 

Likewise with music, the basic digitized music is increasingly hard to sell for money but there are ways to add value to it.  One such way is to offer higher quality files, such as 320kbps or lossless.  Another is to add value through packaging.  This is why Nine Inch Nails was able to sell 2,500 of their $300 Ultra-Deluxe Ghosts boxset.  The music itself was free (you could download it from the NIN website) but the packaging added the value.  Because the Ghosts Ultra-Deluxe boxset was autographed by Trent Reznor himself, it is an example of a third way to add value to music: by adding a connection to the artist.  This is the “souvenir method”.  People are willing to pay money, or more money than they normally would, if there is a component of connection to the artist.  Autographs can provide this connection as can individualized artwork.  Selling music at a concert is less about selling the actual music and more about selling a physical memory of the event, thus providing the connection to the artist.

 

It has been pointed out to me that there many other types of value contained within music still.  While this is the topic for an entire other post, the attention and personal conviction behind music absolutely have value.  My argument is merely that on a macro scale, people are increasing realizing that paying for music with money is not a fair proposition for them, the consumer (hence the drop in CD sale).  They are willing to pay when this music has value added to it (hence the rise in the sale of vinyl – the value is in the better packaging). 

 

Is Music “Worthless” Feedback…

Because I was recieving a lot of negative feedback on my last post, where I said that I believed that music is now “worthless”, I decided to ask Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail if what he thought of my hypothesis.  His reply:

Although your point is generally right, you made a rhetorical error by equating “value” and “price”. Just because something has no price doesn’t mean it has no value. Indeed, in the non-monetary economies of attention and reputation, it may be valued very highly. In short, your mistake was using “worthless” too loosely–to quote The Princess Bride, “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

This is a common error, and I address it one chapter in the book.

Chris Anderson’s next book, out this summer, is called FREE  and is about the economics of Free.  It is my most eagerly anticipated book of the year.   Thanks so much to Chris for responding and so quickly (in ten minutes!).  

Check out the comments by Jermey Meyes and David Rose on the previous post for some interesting critisism of the post.

The Value Of Music, Pt. 4 – Music Is Worthless

Part four of Hit Singularity’s look at the value of music is authored by myself.  It is my attempt to answer the same question I asked each of my previous guest posters.  Before I give my take, I’d just like to take a moment to again thank Matt Morrell, Bud Caddell, and Christopher Lars Carlson for their time and insightful views.

The question at hand is this:

”What is music worth today?  Is it worth the $17.99/album that a CD retails for?  Is it worth the $9.99/album that you can buy an album for on itunes?  Is music free (or devoid of worth), now that it can so easily by disseminated online?  Does it have some other value or gain value from some other place?”

Music is now worthless and has no longer has any inherent value.  This is a controversial statement and I’m sure many will disagree with it on the basis of both personal conviction and economics.  I believe I can address the economic objections and I hope I can also sway some to reevaluate their belief that the music they create, sell, or buy has “value”.

The reason for the worthlessness of music (and I say this in a purely economic sense and I am not referring to the personal value music holds for many) is its infinite supply.  In a manner of minutes (seconds?) I can find and download almost any album or song online for free.  Putting aside the legal objections to this action (and since 95% of music downloaded is done so illegally, this objection is largely irrelevant), this essentially infinite supply of music renders it valueless. 

This has several implications.  It does NOT mean that it is impossible to make money through the sale of music.  However, the days of selling albums or songs at 128kbps or 192kbps are rapidly drawing to a close more and more people awake to the notion that the supply of music at these bitrates is infinite and that paying money for them is a silly proposition.  The economics of scarcity and abundance are worth examining.  People have stopped paying for music for the same reason people don’t pay for air.  It’s everywhere and free so why would you?

Except people do pay money for air, in certain circumstances.  If you scuba dive, you will gladly pay good money for air.  Of course, the value in this situation does not come from the air itself but from the packaging and delivery of the air.  In short, air = worthless.  Air in a tank when you need it = valuable. 

Likewise with music, the basic digitized music is worthless but there are ways to add value to it.  One such way is to offer higher quality files, such as 320kbps or lossless.  Another is to add value through packaging.  This is why Nine Inch Nails was able to sell 2,500 of their Ultra-Deluxe Ghosts boxset.  The music itself was free (you could download it from the NIN website) but the packaging added the value.  Because the Ghosts Ultra-Deluxe boxset was autographed by Trent Reznor himself, it is an example of a third way to add value to music: by adding a connection to the artist.  This is the “souvenir method”.  People are willing to pay money, or more money than they normally would, if there is a component of connection to the artist.  Autographs can provide this connection as can individualized artwork.  Selling music at a concert is less about selling the actual music and more about selling a physical memory of the event, thus providing the connection to the artist.

There are more ways to add value to music than those listed.  Even in an age of, what I believe to be, valueless music, there are many ways to add value to music.

 

I’d love to hear your critique of this piece, especially my grasp of economics.  If you like it, help to spread the word by Digging this piece.  

What Is The Value Of Music, Pt 3 – Christopher Lars Carlson

Part 3 in our series of the value of music is by Christopher Lars Carlson.  Chris is a student at the Berklee School of Music, where he is also president of the Music Business Club.  He manages Tom Howie and can be found on twitter and on his music business blog, A Musician’s Journey, which is filled with great ideas.  The question I asked him was:

What do you think the value of music is?  Is it the $17.99/album that the major labels charged for so long?  Is it the $9.99/album that itunes charges?  Is it the $0.00 that it costs to get music from Pirate Bay?  Is it something else?

This is what Chris said - 

 

d) None Of The Above

Every release needs a goal. Is the goal to gain awareness? then give it away for free. Do you need to make enough money to fund a tour? Then determine what that amount is and estimate how many sales you think you can make. Divide and decide your price point.

It’s my personal belief that there should be options a la NIN (Nine Inch Nails): free, cheap, regular, expensive, insanely expensive.

Depending on where an artist is in their career, only some of these price points will make sense, but the point is that by the next release, they are at a different point in their career and a new strategy will be needed.

To more directly answer your question: I think the value of music is dependent on the relationship between the fan and artist. An UBER fan is going to pay $275 for a release (NIN deluxe box set) but that same person is going to download an album for free from an artist they don’t have a relationship with.

-

The next guest post will be by Shawn M Smith, formerly of TVT Records and currently the man behind Radio Exile.

What Is The Value Of Music, Pt. 2: Bud Caddell

Part 2 of our series on the value of music is by Bud Caddell.  Bud is a strategist at Undercurrent, blogs at WhatConsumesMe, is a popular fellow on twitter, and is an all around brilliant guy when it comes to the digital world.  We’re thrilled to have his guest post.

The Value of Music

Has music suffered from inflation?

In the 50ʼs, a postage stamp was three cents. Today itʼs fourty-two. In the 50ʼs, a gallon of gasoline was around twenty cents and you could buy a tricked out Ford for two grand. The price of a 10” record, offering around three minutes of playback, was $2.85. A 12” record, up to eight minutes of playback, was $4.85 (source: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/ pop/prices-1950.htm). Adjusted for inflation, $4.85 in 1955 is worth $38.34 today (source). But I can buy a single song right now from iTunes for 99 cents.

Sure, youʼre not pressing that vinyl and youʼre not shipping it out to stores, but everything today, especially producing and promoting music, a band, a single, an album, is astronomically more expensive today than it was then. So why is a single so much cheaper today?

Hereʼs another question, whatʼs the top album in the country right now? Do you know? Without looking, I donʼt know either.

The industry loves to blame the digital format and piracy for the erosion of their business. And as long as they do, theyʼll continue to go the way of the dinosaur – and good riddance. Simply put, music is less culturally relevant today than it was in the 1950ʼs. Bob Dylan wonʼt be reincarnated. That popularity with that cultural message doesnʼt happen anymore. Why? Well, for one, the industry today doesnʼt think like John Hammond did. They arenʼt looking for Dylans. Moreover, todayʼs mainstream is an emaciated corpse of its former self. Our interests and musical genres themselves have splintered. The industry saw demand slipping so they raised the cost of the concert ticket. They hope to sell the song for nothing so youʼll hear the band and want to pay the $50 to see them live. They practically asked for their own irrelevance.

I apologize for the obligatory Radiohead reference, but they sold eight million dollars worth of box sets for In Rainbows. Who cares what percentage of people paid nothing for the album. The promotion and the material were remarkable. They were relevant. And they were entirely fan focused.

Before the Beatles, popular artists didnʼt expect to amass a fortune by playing music. They played to earn one fan at a time. The industry still promotes to a mainstream theyʼve drastically miscalculated. They spend large amounts of money to accrue fans that donʼt exist. And they actively commoditize their own products. As an artist, if you let the industry set your price, youʼre going to fail.

Pricing is relative. I wouldnʼt spend one indian nickel on whoever wins this season of American Idol. But I have my wallet wide open for the next tune by the Fleet Foxes. And my price point isnʼt set at 99 cents either, no matter how much industry people tell us that it is. Give me something worth paying more for and Iʼll eagerly do it.

What Is The Value Of Music – Part 1, Matt Morrell

The first guest post in our series on the value of music is by Brooklyn based indie artist Matt Morrell.  Matt is an indie singer-songwriter in the vein of Conor Oberst, the Mountain Goats and Jeff Buckley.  Not only his is stuff great and absolutely worth checking out but he has some great thoughts on what the value of music is, from the perspective of an independent artist.

To refresh your memory, the question I asked was:

 ”What is music worth today?  Is it worth the $17.99/album that a CD retails for?  Is it worth the $9.99/album that you can buy an album for on itunes?  Is music free (or devoid of worth), now that it can so easily by disseminated online?  Does it have some other value or gain value from some other place?”

Matt’s response:

The main thing to keep in mind from a musician’s standpoint is that traditional music sales are no longer anyone’s primary source of income. Just as a hit record today may never be played on the radio, the days of record sales being a barometer of a musician’s popularity are over.

 

Goal #1 as a musician is not to sell your music; it’s to get people to love your music. CDs, in one sense, are leverage that you can use to get your music into people’s minds and hearts, and the price you set on that music is a tool, albeit an important tool, on the road to that goal.

 

Purchasing music is not charity. Ever since Napster arrived, there has been this constant barrage of messages about how artists need us to buy their albums. I don’t subscribe to that argument, and frankly I find the appeal a little obnoxious. The industry around record sales, the same industry that has fifty years of clauses built into record contracts to keep artists mired in debt, they might need record sales, but artists – middle class, working artists – are in a much better position now that their careers aren’t judged by Soundscan numbers.

 

So to get to the question, I think the price of music starts at just around zero and shifts in a kind of auction with the changing context of the work. From a band’s point of view, I think the CD has three ways of looking at its price: the price as a “record,” the price as ”music”, and the price as “merch”.

 

As a record, that $18.99 price tag on a CD sitting lifeless in a store is probably more of a liability to you unless you are a successful pop-country artist with heavy radio and CMT rotation. (Pop-country, of course, is the exception in any discussion of CD prices or relevance). Even if you’re lucky enough to get label backing or distribution, you don’t get to see much of the profits from CDs sold at a retail store. People might be paying nearly twenty dollars, but there are lots of hands in that pot and you won’t see much of the money. At best, it’s cool to have your CD in a store next to records like “Blonde on Blonde” and “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain”.

 

On the other hand, as “music”, an album of mp3s downloaded “illegally” off the internet but played constantly on someone’s iPod could easily bring in $15-$50 a year in merch and ticket sales at shows down the line. As a “legal” download, iTunes and Amazon are kind of doing the job right now, but I don’t know how long it can last. The process of actually loading up and iPod and credit cards and all that nonsense is pretty cumbersome. Until digital music is as easy – and cool – as going to a record store counter and putting down some cash for a 45″ single, that part of the business is transitional at best.

 

Then there is the CD as “merch”. Merch sales are the lifeblood of a band anyway, and CDs are a crucial part of that. There’s a difference between a CD you bought in the store and a CD you buy from a show. It’s a souvenir, and at many shows, you buy it directly from the band itself.

 

And when the band gets a little more creative, there is no limit to how much they could get for a CD, either at a show or over the internet. A band with a great following will easily be able to get $20 a disc on their website for a short-run CD, signed by the band, at very little cost to them. I know some bands have a problem doing this, but music fans love autographed stuff. And why not: you can’t get an autographed mp3. A fan is much, much more likely to fall in love with an album that they have an autographed copy of even if they had already downloaded it for free on the internet.

 

Bands and artists have never had more freedom in setting their own price for their music. There is no set “retail price” anymore, and any band worth a fan’s time will figure out how to set the right prices in the right context. Still, no matter what the price on the music is, who’s paying for it, or what medium that music is on, every artist has to get out there, make great music, connect with their audience and play shows. There is not, nor will there ever be a substitute for passion, persistence, and commitment to craft.

Matt Morrell Myspace

What Is The Value Of Music?

Next week I will be discussing the value of music.  Over the past 40 years, the sale of music has been relatively constant.  Music was sold by the album and the price of an album has been more or less constant.  But now, with the internet, everything has changed.  Music is no longer predominantly sold by the album and in many cases, music is not sold at all.  I think it is very important for the entire industry to ask itself what the value of music is in 2009.  Does music even have any value any more?  I posed the following question to several very smart, very well informed people in various areas of the music and technology world.  Next week I will be posting their answers Monday through Thursday and on Friday I will weigh in with my thoughts.  

The question I asked was: 

 ”What is music worth today?  Is it worth the $17.99/album that a CD retails for?  Is it worth the $9.99/album that you can buy an album for on itunes?  Is music free (or devoid of worth), now that it can so easily by disseminated online?  Does it have some other value or gain value from some other place?”

If you would like to contribute to this debate, feel free to sent me your thoughts on the subject at tom@hitsingularity.com.

Social Media Strategy Framework For Bands, Refined

Here is an updated version of the chart I posted yesterday.  This one is slightly more detailed and a bit more accurate.  Thanks to all who contributed suggestions. 

 

If you liked this post then help spread the word and Digg it.  If you disagree with it or think it is incomplete, please let me know.  This is a work in progress and I’d love to get feedback on it.

Social Media Strategy Flow-Chart For Bands

This flow-chart is attempt to create the framework of a basic social media strategy for a band.  The chart shows the basic tools of a social media strategy and it illustrates the primary movement of fans within these tools.  It also attempts to document what the purpose of each site/tool is.  This is by no means a full or complete strategy.  Various other outposts sites or tools can be added (such as a PureVolume page) as desired.  This is also only a framework.  How and to what extend each tool is used is up to the person executing the strategy.  

Note: blogs/press refers to third-party blogs that write about the artist, not an actual artist blog.  That would fall under the “artist website”. 

Edit, 1/6/08: I’ve posted an updated version of this chart here.  It is slightly more detailed and reworked.

 

 

 

If you liked this post then help spread the word and Digg it.  If you disagree with it or think it is incomplete, please let me know.  This is a work in progress and I’d love to get feedback on it.