modern music marketing

New Marketing Strategy for Musicians leaves big labels behind.

British rock band Marillion has raised $1 million dollars from its fans via its website. This has allowed them to finance 2 albums and tour North America. They did it by pre-selling their album through their website. This is a completely different take on music marketing and financing, and appears to be working out. The Internet saves the day again. Check out all the details in the Reuters article.

Livewire: Today's Pop Stars in It for the URLs [Reuters]

James Taylor Sends Musical Greetings Via Hallmark

Good ideas are everywhere. This one comes via Yahoo news:

The Hallmark name is synonymous with card shopping, but it has also turned into a successful music retailer during the holiday season.

This year James Taylor joins a long line of artists to release a holiday album exclusively through Hallmark's Gold Crown stores. "James Taylor: A Christmas Album" is due in the United States and Canada Nov. 1. Grammy Award winner Dave Grusin produced the 11-track set, which features a duet with Natalie Cole on "Baby It's Cold Outside."

"Our estimation with James Taylor is that this will be a platinum album (for U.S. shipments in excess of one million copies)," Hallmark manager of integrated marketing Ann Herrick says.

Maybe you should put together a Christmas album exclusivly in your city and make a deal with a local retailer, preferably one with a chain of stores.

Record Labels Said to Be Next on Spitzer List for Scrutiny

Elliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general is casting his eyes on the music industry, particularly its practices for influencing what songs are heard on the public airwaves.

According to several people involved, investigators in Mr. Spitzer's office have served subpoenas on the four major record corporations - the Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group and the Warner Music Group - seeking copies of contracts, billing records and other information detailing their ties to independent middlemen who pitch new songs to radio programmers in New York State.

The inquiry encompasses all the major radio formats and is not aiming at any individual record promoter, these people said. Mr. Spitzer and representatives for the record companies declined to comment.

Dave Matthews Band Goes Wireless

Nancy Gohring fill us in on how Dave and his band use wireless technology at shows...

Dave Matthews Band uses between two and four Vivato base stations to cover concert venues where the band plays. The network is used for a variety of band-related business including ticketing services, audio/video information for crew, publishing of set lists for concert attendees, and band personal business including keeping in touch with family and friends.

Fake Buzz

Spin Me has some wise words on Message Board abuse.

If you're gonna do the old "hit the message board" trick, at least get folks posting from different IP addresses on different days, or you're going to invoke the wrath of bulletin board or weblog moderators. Remember that fake buzz is worthless and real buzz is priceless. You can't pay someone to fake buzz, and you certainly can't muster it yourself. When trolling boards, align yourself with folks who have been members for a while -- those testimonials will be valuable, and true.

The U2 iPod

(via Paid Content) Rumors on this surfaced yesterday and Forbes.com is confirming it...the U2 edition of iPod will come preloaded with the band's new album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, along with portions of the group's 25-year catalog. The iPods will be black and will be made available the same week as the band's 11th studio album, to be released on November 23.

The custom iPods are part of a larger agreement between the band and Apple. The company will have exclusive rights to sell all the songs from the new album online through its iTunes Music Store for at least the first few weeks following the release.

Music Videos On Cellphones

Avista Entertainment Group, Distributed by Universal music & Video Distribution, and Nationwide Wireless Newcomer Trivo Wireless LLc announce today the release of Music Video on Demand on cellular phones(Select Models) Trivo Wireless will launch all of AEG's Music videos, and air them on select Trivo Phones. there will be no charge for this service, Simply log on to Trivo's website, and download a music video. You can even text a friend and send the video to them as an attachment. ( You can only send to a person who has service with Trivo Wireless) this new service will launch on October 29th 2004.

A look at record pools

...With CD sales slipping in recent years, marketing is even more crucial for artists. Whether you blame bad music, Internet piracy or competition for entertainment dollars, the music industry saw CD sales drop an estimated 15 percent to 31 percent since 2000. News this year is encouraging, however, as sales have increased nearly 5 percent thus far over last year with 463 million CDs sold.

Record labels throw promotional weight behind the Jay-Zs, John Mayers and Pinks of the industry, while the Ciaras struggle for attention. Radio stations tend to stick with proven hit-makers rather than risk having listeners turn the dial because they don't recognize a song or artist.

Nightclubs have long been a breaking ground for new music, but with the consolidation of the industry into four major labels, and a few media conglomerates controlling most of the radio stations, it's tougher to promote new music by unknown artists.

"(`Goodies') is a record that made it because of record pools," said independent promoter Vernon Shelton, of Charlotte-based Voodoo Music Inc....

Full Story

Napster 1st again

Roxio's online music service, Napster, is to become the first in the UK to offer pre-paid cards in shops for buying digital music downloads. The cards, which are being sold through the Dixons Group stores (Dixons, Currys, The Link and PC World), are similar to pre-pay cards on phones. Each card contains a unique code that users enter on the online store in order to buy tracks. The cards can also be redeemed against subscription costs. They will cost £14.95 for 15 tracks, £56.95 for 60 tracks and £25.95 for a 3-month subscription. That should make buying Christmas presents that little bit easier this year. The cards will be in store from November.

Are your music sales and marketing backwards?

Bob Baker talks music marketing...Are your music sales and marketing backwards?

...If you're one of the many music people who pays lip service to "sales and marketing," I'll bet your sales figures are far below what you'd like them to be. How do I know? Because you have the whole thing backwards.

Stop talking about "sales and marketing" and start arranging these two important activities in their proper order: marketing and sales. Marketing comes first. Sales efforts follow to complete the one-two punch. If you attempt to do sales before you've properly done the marketing, you'll come up short. If you choose to focus on one activity but not the other, you also lose in the long run.

To succeed financially in the music business, both marketing and sales must take place. And take place in that order.

While flipping through cable TV channels recently, I caught one of those watch-TV-at-home college courses. Business was the topic. The announcer made this simple but profound statement: "Marketing is creating interest. Sales is closing the deal." Nine simple words that get right to the core of what marketing and sales are all about...