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INTERNET MARKETING

Internet marketing has become one of the most powerful promotional tools that an artist can use.

There are heaps of people who want to experience independent music without leaving their bedrooms. I could spend years and tens of thousands of dollars touring the world to see independent bands play live or I see their video from the comfort of my computer room and they are ready to play at any time I want to see them. They are all there from New York jazz bands to Irish punk to singers from Soweto. It is great time to be a music fan with wider taste than mainstream Top 40 pulp.

I can’t give you a formula for internet marketing because almost as soon as it is written it will be out of date. I have been to a number of seminars about marketing music via the Internet and I have found speakers recommending very different strategies. Some of them recommend giving away your music for free on the Internet and making your money out of your live shows. Others focus on getting your songs into the iTunes and other catalogues. There is little agreement on the best way to go. The successful business models are still developing so you are pioneer. Artic Monkeys had 30,000 friends on www.myspace.com that got them a major label record deal but the next band to get 30,000 friends won’t get the same attention. There are some charactistics that are widely agreed to:

When you release a song on the Internet you have immediately achieved a world wide release.
The cost of distribution is low.
You don’t need a record company to make a living from a world wide audience.
You can make a good living selling your music through iTunes, Amazon.com and other online sellers.
If you sell enough CD’s to achieve a gold album you may be paid nothing by a record company due to their exploitative contracts, but on the Internet you can produce revenue from your first sale at a much higher rate than any record company will ever pay you.
Lots of kids sit in their bedrooms searching for “free MP3 music” in their favourite style giving artists a connection to people who are too young to go to a pub or club to see you and you can reach every country on earth from your web site.

Develop a business model that works for you. If you have a good live show are are actively touring you might choose to give away your songs as MP3’s in exchange for an e-mail address and location then make your money off your touring and merchandise. (This would be a bad plan if your were a 'one hit wonder' like Cindy Lauper and gave away “Girls Just Want to have Fun” for free.) Prince gave away his last album for free as a CD attached to a newspaper in the UK.

You might want to video your gigs then sell your songs via iTunes. These “virtual gigs” can be downloaded by people anywhere in the world and you can reach under age people who would never have a chance to see you live in a licensed venue.

First thing set up your own web site based on your band name eg: www.lemontwist.com.au which you use as your primary marketing tool. Work a couple of the social networking sites but don’t spread yourself too thin. This way you can meet thousands of people on these sites in a context of who you are musically. There are new sites springing up every day trying to be the next www.myspace.com or www.youtube.com . Put a marketing effort into a few of them but don't try to keep up with social exchanges on 10 different sites. Look for sites that are designed for your target demographic. Keep in mid that a site that mostly has a user base of musicians is probably not your target market (musicians never have any money and expect to get their music for free.) If you sound like Barry Manallow then you would be looking to do your marketing effort on sites with lots of women in their 30’s and 40’s. If you do Goth music then Goth social networking sites would be appropriate to share your angst with sites for 'vampires' etc.

There is a new generation of music fan who may never go to a gig or buy a CD from a "bricks and mortar" store but maintain an intense relationship with you watching your downloaded gigs, listening to your MP3’s, putting your photos in his wallpaper and screensaver, and exchanging e-mail with you. Sell him or her a t-shirt, DVD and your best material via iTunes or similar. You might give away MP3's for free but there will increasing opportunity to sell premium quality product with new high definition music and video formats.

Just because you have been giving away music via MP3 does not mean you have lost the copyright to it. You should only give it away on a condition of personal use only, no right to copy or distribute. You are also quite within your rights to stop giving it away and make it a sale only product.

On your web site you could even sell the guitar you played at your last gig or recording at a considerable premium to what you paid for it. You have added value by using it to perform or record. This could be quite valuable if you start becoming famous. I know a girl who had been selling CD's and songs via iTunes but has made more money selling signed pictures and posters. She is an attractive girl and the photography is excellent. (A good photographer is a real artist just as much as a musician.)

Don't get too carried away by the Internet thing as, for now, most music is still sold from "bricks and mortar" shops.

The challenge to the musician is to find a business model they can make a living out of. With an Internet business model it does not matter where in the world either the musician or the fan lives, it can still be a close relationship. A musician in a town of 2,000 people can do a gig every week (even if the audience is the same 20 kids from school), video it, post it on the internet and could have 10,000 people see the gig each week. This is vastly more reach than the ‘playing pubs and clubs’ approach of years gone by. You could play to a stadium sized audience from your basement every week.

I think many musicians will be happy with this type of business model:

Start by giving MP3's and videos away for free to build an audience. Sell T-shirts, photos, posters, under pants, coffee mugs or whatever on your web site and charge more for the ones you have personally used. The license agreement on the free stuff should be: personal use only, no right to distribute. Keep statistics of everything that is downloaded.
As your write and record better quality material and build a fan base stop giving stuff away and sell the music via iTunes and mail order CD. At this point just have samples (parts of songs or videos) of your better stuff on your web site.
Give lower quality stuff away for free and the premium quality product that is paid for. For example a 'rough and ready' video of a gig can be downloaded as a Quick Time file for free but a well produced surround sound DVD would be sold.
When you have a break through you can withdraw your free material and sell everything.
Older musicians with a back catalogue may want to re-record all their earlier material that is owned by a record company and give it away on the Internet. (This is especially true if the record company has an exploitive contract with them.) The new recordings may generate new interest and justify a profitable tour. What is your spin for the new recordings? Modern production, or "Now I have played this song 10,000 times this is how I should have done it the first time."

DEVELOP AN E-MAIL LIST

When people visit your web site you should try to harvest their e-mail address so you can keep in touch with them. If they like your material they may want to know about product releases, gigs, free MP3 give aways etc. You need a mechanism for collecting e-mails, storing them in a database and sending mass e-mails (your ISP will block you if there are too many people in your address field.) There are plenty of companies that offer this kind of service but I have found that http://www.icontact.com/ offers a good service and value for money.

They will provide code you can embed in your web page to collect the e-mail addresses. They will store the database and provide an SMTP server for sending. There are even templates for designing your e-mails.

STANDING OUT IN THE CROWD

I just did a search on Google for “free MP3 music” and got 129,000,000 sites listed. Perhaps I am not the first person who has thought of this? What can you do to stand out from the crowd?

Careful tuning of your web site to the types of search you are trying to attract. This is called “Search Engine Optimization” and you can start finding out how to do that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
Swap links with like minded people so you have a link to their site and they have a link to yours. This will help both of you get better ranking on search engines and will act as a referral from other people with a similar sound/vibe. Go to the artist links from this site to your web site. If you don't have a links page make one and put all my artist links on your links page. Send me an e-mail and I will add you to my links page.
Viral marketing. E-mail your fan base a link to your latest video or other cool thing (remember the guys who did the video clip on the treadmills?) and if it is cool enough they will forward it to all their friends and soon enough a million people will know you.
Make some fake fan sites and put links to your sites on it. (Also links to all our other friends from my links page)
Develop a mailing list of e-mail addresses to maintain contact with people who like your music.
Dare I say it? Get a big spam mailing list.
Sponsored links. See web sites such as: GOOGLE (Click on the word) which can have an advantage of only showing up on local people’s searches.
Internet advertising via banners.
Pay per click etc.

These are just some ideas to get you started. There is no where nearly enough space to write a story on how to do Internet advertising and marketing here so do a search and check out the dozens of sites about Internet marketing.

The treadmill guys hired 8 treadmills for 3 days, a hall and the video was choreographed by one of their sisters. The camera was on a tripod and never moved. Not exactly high tech or expensive. It just required a bit of imagination.

YOUR OWN NAME

Make sure you have control of your own name. When you are thinking of names sit at your computer and check availability in the www.ddns.com.au site of every name you think of rather than thinking up a killer name and finding that www.killername.com is already taken. Once you register www.killername.com you own that URL world wide. Legally there are very few other ways of getting world wide ownership of a name.

Have your own web site with your name in it eg: www.myband.com like www.lemontwist.com.au NOT www.smallpond.com/usercommunities/myband
You should have a presence on www.myspace.com and www.youtube.com or similar web sites but use that to direct people back to your www.myband.com web site where the main action is.

DON'T PISS PEOPLE OFF WITH YOUR INTERNET MARKETING EFFORTS

I have seen people make some really bad mistakes with their marketing. Don't do the following:

Don't sent people MP3's, videos or other large files. Include a link to the file but don't force them to download your stuff by sending lots of MP3's.
Don't expose your mailing list by using the To: or Cc: field. Use the Bcc: field so you don't give away your mailing list. I have seen people do a Reply all to a marketing starting with "This guy is crap..." Or another muso can just start using your mailing list for his or her marketing.
Don't drive people mad with e-mail every few days. Limit yourself to a 3 to 5 week interval between your marketing e-mails.

Most people can read HTML e-mail these days so make your e-mail colourful and visually interesting. Get help if you are an audio guy like me who is a bit challenged by the visual aesthetic. Plain text e-mail just looks like it is going to be boring so why read it?

SEEK OUT THE GATEKEEPERS

It is a fact of life that 90% of music produced by bands is crap. ("90% of everything is crap" - Andy Warhol.) The "Gatekeepers" are the decision makers in organizations like record companies, radio stations, TV stations etc. who only let the select few through the gate. By watching Video Hits you know that all the videos will be of a certain standard because there are a bunch of very tough "Gatekeepers" ensuring technical and artistic quality. The product put up for viewing will also be filtered for production standards and to match the target market of that organization. Getting played on "Rage" at 3:00am is an easy gate to get through. Getting played on Channel V on Saturday morning is a hard gate to get through. Community radio is easy, commercial radio is hard. Once again: It is a numbers game, and the more people who have a positive experience of your music the more fans you will get until you are famous.

As you progress through your career you will get better and you will work out how to pitch yourself to progressively tougher "gatekeepers". Ask yourself, what advantage does the "Gatekeeper" gain from letting you through his/her gate? Hint - the answer is not 'promoting Australian music or young talent'. What is the gatekeeper looking for? Try sending him or her an e-mail and asking what they are looking for. Always be polite and professional when dealing with gatekeepers, don't piss them off or drive them crazy by calling or e-mailing them too often.

There are Gatekeepers on the Internet as well as the traditional media.