Music 2.0 and Chamillionaire

Thank you to everyone that has made such nice comments about my last post; I kind of feel under pressure to post things that will be appreciated at least as much. I hope that this post measures up.

As we all know these are very interesting times in the music business; all of us who make our living in this space are scurrying around trying to figure out the answers to developing and monetizing our content. This post is going to be more about independent music than particular songs or artists so I hope I am not outside of my jurisdiction here. As independent labels and musicians that are primarily self financed we must constantly think out of
the box as we approach marketing and we must continually seek out new low cost, new media tools that can help us and our content gain exposure. First thing we must do is set our expectations appropriately.

If anyone honestly believes that you are going to be able to out market the major label system by being creative or crafty online only, you are delusional. The latest PEW study on online buying trends states that (I'm not sure who they are interviewing) 56% of the folks interviewed use the Internet for product research, only 7% percent of those interviewed said that the Internet had a major impact on their decision to purchase (the operative word here being major). This same study says that 83% of music buyers find out about new music via radio, TV, or in a movie and 64% of those interviewed say they find out about music through word of mouth. Are these percentages accurate I don't know; I do know that while iTunes has recently become the second largest retailer of music after Walmart; digital downloads still only represent 10% of music sales.

There are some music futurists like Gerd Leonhard (whom I greatly respect) that say music and video content should be free and that we can longer control distribution so we have monetize our content based on user engagement via sponsorship or advertising. That's a lot harder than it sounds and most independents can't afford to experiment long enough with possible income from the Long Tail when they need to sell records to eat.

Today I went to the Advertising 2.0 conference in Manhattan, to see if I could gain some new wisdom on how to market and promote my content in a way that would attract possible sponsors and guess who there hanging out at the conference going to seminars; the rapper Chamillionaire! I was compelled to approach him and ask why he was there. He said, "hey man, I'm trying to get up on this advertising and technology game." Wow!! I was really impressed with this guy and his understanding of what he needs to do to separate himself in a marketplace that is saturated and many artists are marginalized as ringtone rappers or one hit wonders.



The moral of this post is that even though in the Music 2.0 economy there are a plethora of new media tools to market yourself and engage with your audience, whether that is Reverb Nation a Twitter blog, Vlogging, or free content RSS feeding your fans; but the simple fact is that you cannot replace spending some money on traditional marketing. Spend some money on a decent creative publicist and some sort of inexpensive video. It is also important to create a partnership with a company that can go after TV or film sync licenses for your songs for a 10% commission. And if you think you have some really good songs you should know the different distribution points for them; educate yourself; get daily RSS feeds from Hypebot, Coolfer, Mashable, and Paid Content. Well, anyway, I am new Chammilionaire fan, "Riding Dirty!" That's wassup! I wrote this while really sleepy I hope i didn't bore you to death.