Music-Marketing

I believe Adsense is a great way to make money, I really do, however have a step back and think who is actually benefiting from this. If I was an advertiser I need someone to click on my link and then be converted by text so that they can buy.

If I put on an Adword Ad "TechnoWarriors New Album- TechnoTakeDown- Just Released. www.myspace/technowarrior" who is actually going to download that? If you are an unknown no will download it. You will get a click through because there are inquizative people out there, but if they have to pay for the download, they will leave. You lose money.

There are plenty of free ways to get people to your site (blogs, search engines, forums, friends, articles, YouTube, Facebook etc)

And that brings me to point 2.

If you want them to buy from your site then you are going to be in difficulty. A small amount of websites actually make money from the actual millions that are online. Sad fact, but true. Why should people buy from someone that they don't know? It is a valid point. So you must first convert that stranger to a music lover. So they must identify your site as a nice place to be. You must give them free stuff. Give them free MP3s (full length, full sample rate), give them free info, give them discounts to your gigs...etc. What you then need to do is convert that music lover to a music friend.. By promoting your stuff and giving away stuff you are actually pre-selling them.

People only go onto certain sites because they get what they need, usually for free and it is a constant stream. The only way you can compete is to 1. Capture their email address for a newsletter, and 2. Create a blog that they can subscribe to.

The plus point is that you can advertise both the blog and the newsletter in specialised directories for both communication methods. Therefore gaining more traffic from those sources.

Someone who has subscribed to your newsletter or blog wants to know about you and your music not constant sales pitches. Many people fail on that count. They want to be treated as someone special, especially the newsletter folk. Tell them of up-and-coming gigs, tell them of that new album that you have released (80% off for them). etc.

I have seen things on websites that have made me cringe. One of them was "send an SAE for a tape of our work". Sad but true. If you want people to listen to your music they need to listen to something straight away. Streaming MP3s are the only choice. The technology to do this is Flash. Now I have said in the past that a web site shouldn't be made out of Flash...with the main reason being the search engines will not pick it up. But Flash is such a simple tool that it must be integrated into our web sites for us to stand a slightest chance of selling anything.

So what do we need to do?

First up is to actually embed Flash into our sites so that it is easy to work, preferably free, looks nice, easy to set up and more than anything...fool proof for the user.

Now I have searched high and low for a flash player that meets those demands (I couldn't tell you how many I have downloaded), and I have found one. Now I think that it is a traversty that this software hasn't been shouted about- and its free

The various players- MP3 or Video (which can be found here). All you need to do is download either a movie player, or an MP3 player, upload the various players components to your site, upload an MP3 or Flash movie file (FLV), then tell the Coding Wizard where everything is stored. It will automatically give you the code. You copy and then paste it in to the source section of your HTML where you want the player...and thats it.

This needs to be accompanied with your music. People need to associate with your music to something they know before they listen to anything, yet alone download anything. So make sure that you actually specify what you music sounds like. This is a fantastic way to get the "mental image download audience". By saying: "Tiesto sounding music to make your butt shake. Click here to dance for free." Is an extremaly good mental image ticking all the downloaders boxes. 1. They are into that style of music, and 2. Its free. You are putting up mental images of kicking music because you have associated it with kicking artists and descriptive words.

You have to know your audience for this to work. Hence doing prep work before you even start building a web site. Ask yourself, who actually is your audience? if you have created trance tracks you need to be building pages designed to attract trance listeners. A great way of doing this, but getting targeted downloaders is to make pages that review trance artists. If you list the "best trance artists" and then have a page dedicated to profiling each one, then you are netting a wide but targeted audience who likes trance. Then at the bottom of each page link to your own songs.

Now this statement has caused a few problems for me in the past, but I stand by it. Lets think of what it means to have Adsense on our site. Someone comes along on one of your music pages, sees and advert, they click on it, you get paid 10c and they find something from a competitor. Now who wins?

So the stuff that you want people to see and stay to read and then action upon is being reduced because they are going to a competitor via Adsense.

Unfortunately Google doesn't tell us what adverts, (the specific adverts) are doing well. It is profitable information, why should they? So we are putting on a blind fold when we put ads on our site.

I am suggesting that you take off all Adsense links that are on the important pages and keep them on pages that are, as I like to call them, "throw away". They are pages to buff up the page number from your site. I have a few Adsense links on my main site and with all the competitor filters you can use it is almost impossible to stop people clicking on a link to someone else. If you are selling something, keep the Adsense off. Adsense is geared up for advertisers. Adsense is a good moniterising tool, but you have to be careful where you place those ads!

To back this up I did a little research. Out of all the top Internet marketing people do they have Adwords on their main sites?

Jim Daniels: No
Mark Hendricks: No
David Vallieres: No
Marlon Sanders: No
Rosalind Gardner: No
Derrick Gehl: No

Ok, how about the big companies. If you need traffic, surely they will be raking money in from their massive/ millions of visitors:

Amazon.com: No (the ads that are there are related to Amazon)
IMDb.com: No
Adobe: No (awesome intro though)
Microsoft: No
Walmart: No

They promote their own products and they keep their traffic internal- not sharing it with anyone else.

Let me tell you about a bit of information that came my way:

There is a little study that was released from the NYU's Business School. They decided to check out the music marketing arena specifically about Blogs and do they actually increase sales. This occurred from Jan 07 to Feb 07. It is important to note that it was done over one month!

They tracked 108 albums sales. They compared people who did nothing and promoted their albums normally (this would be the base line) with people who promoted using blogs and MySpace.

The results were quite shocking.

They found that people who had MySpace friends and did promotion between them increased sales. However the amount of friends that you do have does matter however, they found one other little thing.

MySpace was good, but blogging was much better.

If the album they were talking about was released by a major label, sales increased by 5 times.

If there were about 40 posts, then sales jumped by 3 times. However, if there were over 250 posts, then sales jumped up 6 times.

Now this is hugely significant especially about the power of "word of mouth".

Online chatter that is free seems to create a better sales pitch or a better advertisement than the traditional blatant advertisement method.

Something to think about. We have to think about the type of blogs that were used, but I would suggest that they must have been very relevant (i.e. to specific genre) and the post must have been in a promotional area or the writer must already have been known to the blog.

One just has to look at the whole issue and see that it is astoundingly easy for a "non label" musician to do exactly the same as their labelled counterparts. I would assume though that time is the main problem. However, fo the indi musician who should already be blogging and MySpace friend making then this shouldn't be much of a problem.

Here are 5 tips to increase subscribers and have a cool blog:

0: Get a blogger account (www.blogger.com). Helps to have a blog account, hence number 0 ;)

1: Make sure that your blog is updated and relevant. Seems obvious, but people seem to use a blog just for advertisement. Forget that notion. It needs to be updated a least twice a week. Not too many times as people just won't have time to read all your text.

2: Link your blog to your website and tell people about it in your newsletter (you do have a newsletter right?). Also use ping services (go into Google and type in Blog ping) after each post. Make sure that people can bookmark your blog as well. There are many services on the net that allow you to place code on your blog to subscribe via RSS and to bookmark.

3: Too many words are just plain boring. Add graphics and video. This just makes your blog seem...more professional and also subconsciously increases your knowledge.

4: Promote your blog like you would your site. Post into blog directories, make and post articles and include a link back to your blog. Relevantly comment on other peoples blogs, including a link back to your site.

5: Make your blog keyword friendly. Your main keyword/ tags should be in the headline and like an hourglass throughout your text (more at the top, little in the middle, more at the bottom). Oh, and make sure that you have a hyperlink with your keyword.

Remember though that a blog is a build up mechanism. One post won't bring you legions of fans but regular posts over time will get people alerted to your presence. You need to turn a stranger into a listener and then into a friend.

Just remember that people are giving you their time, so reward them with good content. This is so as well on MySpace, make sure that your friends are given what they signed up to: information about you and your group not just constant advertisements.

I have found and reviewed a great information source on the whole area of blogging. It can be found here: Blogging, Traffic and Money.

Koopa are the first unsigned artist to get to number 31 in the UK charts and who have been signed in the UK for 5 years and a 4 album deal...worth £128.000.

Erm...what were they thinking?!

Let me get this straight.

1. They have got to number 31 by selling a download track only - no CDs at all, so their fan base must be quite large.

2. To get into the charts, hmmm let me see, at the lowest estimate maybe about 5,000 fans who bought, say at £2...a very low estimate. So that is £10,000 for one song?

3. For four albums they have got signed into a 5 year deal....read again...5 year deal (so no selling on the side you naughty things) with four albums...say again, a low estimate but 7 tracks per CD...35 tracks for the 5 albums.

4. So for £128,000 they make 35 tracks. Now if they carried on what they were doing at our lowest estimates, what would they make?

£350,000...

5. Now that is low compared to the increase in fans all this exposure brings. Also they would be building up a fan base anyway.

Guess what...all that money would have been theirs and theirs alone.

They were already doing gigs etc and how on earth is a UK based record company going to beat the Internet...by going onto the Internet and selling their tracks?

Ohh thats right, that has already been done by the band!!!

You see music marketing is easily left to musicians now. Not one record company can stop this. It is quite old thinking that you need a record company to be successful.

I read in Fortune magazine that some skeptics say that a record company is needed to handle CD distribution?! You don't need CDs anymore. The web saw to that some years ago and now CD sales are on the decline, however music downloads are on the increase. We live in a very much now society, we want things immediately and we get quite angry when we don't get it quick.

MP3s are the ultimate delivery system that the musican has got now. Your listener can get information and sounds now, without having to send away, without having to get out of their pyjammas!

Do you know why artists are successful? It is because they don't follow the grain. They are different. You see you may read time and time again books, newsletter on music marketing but ultimately it depends on how different your music is. Let me give you an example.

Limp Biscuit was cool, not new but good. Now a new band that comes onto the scene can not be like LB. Why? It has been done before and that artist will never reach the same stars as LB did. However, Linkin Park came about. They were the next level. Once these people came out LB couldn't survive even if they didn't split. LP was different to the norm, more electro, more hip hop, more rememberable.

Any artist that has got far has done it by tweaking a successful artist in the same genre and bettering them. An artist that is the same will vanish because they are not rememberable. Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Enya, Kiss, Madonna, Vangelis, even Mozart all do what they do brilliantly and with a bit more zest.

Why are the Neptunes so cool and everyone wants to work with them? Because they have cool music that is always different, their music marketing hats are well and truely stuck on and respect to them.

This one is going to cause a slight hickup with most musicians because they might not want to hear it, but here we go.

Make sure that you get your own website. This should have really gone at the top, under number zero. But it is the biggest thing that stops you getting what you want.

Now most people have a Soundclick, Garageband, MySpace domain name etc. True. Can you see the problem?

The main problem is that they get the traffic- your promotional work. Just like my little rant with Adsense, having a domain which isn't yours is only going to give:

1. the host site the traffic,
2. increase your competition due to popularity,
3. Make you work even harder to get above the noise.

They should actually be working the other way around. They should be giving you traffic. This only works by using them.

You direct the people (where it could become a torrent of traffic from those sites) to your site, and because they already have been pre-sold to your cause they are more than likely ready and eager to sign up to your newsletter and blog.

Your own domain also insulates your music from sites that collapse or even become less popular.

A domain also gives your music and yourself an air of professionalism. It is free to join MySpace etc. But to have a domain name you have to pay for that. You get respected a bit more.

Anyone who is anyone on the net says sure, use community sites, but please have your own domain.

This is what will make you. Most of your competition have a community site address, but you won't. You will have the works, you will be able to do what you want without someone elses constrictions.

Unfortunately they all take time out to use. Because of their popularity most community sites are just the poor brother and sister of MySpace and Facebook (which were the first and better respectively). Promote using them but watch that you don't become too engrosed and forget your own domain.

If you have video use YouTube other sites don't get the traffic or the ease of use. Video should be used to promote gigs, and yourself practising etc. With links back to your site. Where the video will be embedded.

Now some people haven't read number 11, but that is cool. The MP3 sites are very powerful motivators, and their marketing machine tells you...NO...instills it into your mind that you need them.

Obviously you don't.

But, I will help you. So here are some of the ways that you can increase your chart ranking in these MP3 sites. The main one being Soundclick, but they are roughly all the same.

Exposure is the key.

1. Participate in the forums. Have your direct song link within your signature.

2. Make sure that your songs are directly linked to. If your songs are not then that would be a music marketing mistake. People won't really search for a track. They want it now so give them the song that you advertised.

3. Give family and friends the link, share it with work collegues. Don't be shy. If they think it is cool they could spread it to their friends.

4. Do a remix of an artist. People don't actually search for you. They type in BassHunter, Eminem etc. So if you do a remix, or even a "soundslike" then people will find you better. Even in these MP3 sites, people search (of what public actually do search these sites) for artists that they can relate to.

5. If you put your music in a crowded chart/ genre (techno, dance, trance) which have 200,000 tracks then it is unlikely that you will come tops.

However, if you put your music into a less crowded genre then you will get higher with the same amount of work. No ones work is pure techno, pure trance etc. It is usually a combination of a few, so that is ok then ;)

Unfortunately the genre will get full in time. Hence why you need a site. With more people come more tracks which in turn gives you more competition and ultimately morepromotional work.

Why put yourself through all of that? Use the same amount of work, or even a little less, and promote your own domain and own site.

Now this has got to be a main stunbling block for alot of musicians. How do you accept payment?

Payment like credit cards, Paypal even cheques?

There are many solutions on the Internet, one of the best ones has got to be Clickbank.

All you do is:

1. Sign up

2. Pay once only $49

3. Set up a sales page and a thankyou/ downloading page.

4. Sell your music for over $3 (minimum amount)

5. Clickbank take $1 + 7.5% for processing. There is no monthly fees and no other fees.

6. They take care of all credit card (and other payment) handling they also take care of returned stuff.

For one signup you can actually sell upto 99 things. Which is cool.

There are many ways to market your stuff, however if I gave you 1 billion ways to market your stuff, more than likely you will only do 20 of them.

If something works you will do more of it, if it doesn't then you won't.

However you will find that when you start to market your music things will work and things won't.

All the advice someone can give you and the tips will not sway you when something doesn't work.

Please remember though most things that you can think of will work, it is just "what you measure work as". Also time is needed with most advertising methods and a way to track it.

If you want something to be downloaded something will work if the downloads go up (by tracking).

If you want to have a record contract (don't know why...;) ) then having one or being contacted by someone in the record industry is the achievement.

So when someone says "I have 100 ways for you to promote your music" are you really going to use all 100, or the ones that work the best for what you want?

You need to set out a plan to figure out what is your actual goals. Set out short term and long term plans.

What would you like to do? Build a site? Obtain traffic? Sell music? Get a record contract?

All of these questions are actual goals in themselves.

Just say if you want traffic you need:

- a website with own domain or a blog
- web pages/ topics that are magnets to what people want
- web pages/ topics that are optimised for search engines
- building links into your site
- newsletter
- music that can be played/ shown on comminity sites
- putting a link in your email signature
- forum participation

If you haven't got a blog or a webpage then you need to build a plan for that.

Now, I have had many an email asking/ demanding on "how do I get into iTunes?

Well before I reveal that and some extra bonus places as well let me let you into a small secret that not many people know about:

If you go straight into iTunes and your music is bad then you would have fluffed your chance.

If your music is good, then await the downloads (as long as it is marketed right) ;)

You see music marketing isn't always about how you actually promote your music, it is how you built the tune in the first place.

Alot of people think that if they go onto iTunes then all their prayers will be answered and their music will be better.

This is not the case. iTunes and the other stores reward good music and professionalism. Having a scribbled inlay page or a poor picture is not going to do you any favours and it will reduce downloads and actually your credability.

Remember people are now buying so they want some quality stufff...so make sure you give it to them. Make sure that it is the best you can offer, if you even say "I should have done this or that" don't release.

Here is the link to get you in iTunes, YahooMusic, Walmart etc. Sign up, load up your tunes and away you go: iTunes and others portal

You may have a site that has been made by someone else, but music marketing dictates that you should have some knowledge in how your site is actually set out.

Just writing a website and putting it on the net is not the norm nowadays. Unfortunately because of naughty people trying to scam the search engines they have got wise and now the old tricks are now invalid.

So now music marketing people are actually telling people what you should have done all along...keep it real and deliver quality.

Some people ask "how can I quicken this bit up" or even "how can I do little work and get paid alot".

That does not occur. To achieve good web positioning and good traffic you have to have a site that people want to go to, seems simple doesn't it?

If you write one good webpage and people come to it, logic dictates that if you write more, more people will come. That is what a good website delivers.

The good sites on the internet offer something that is of good value and of a free nature. It encourages people to check it out. It also trances your competition as they will usually have paid content.

You see it is about defending. If someone has the idea of "5000 classic stamps collection at $20" that seems really cool. But how if someone had "10,000 classic stamps at $15"?

Price is hard to defend.

Making something for free and giving it away also has the added benefit of making you out to be a "knowledgable person".

So when we make a site, our own domain, then we can incorporate ideas like this to attract people back, as well as releasing tracks at regular intervals.

How you shouldn't build a site.

This artist's music appeared on a film: http://www.myspace.com/peas

The four tracks advertised/ played are nice but I want more. I go to their homepage, which is all flash (very bad- search engines don't spider those pages)...now try and find that artists work from a page that they advertised.

I will give you a bit of time.

His link "peas" goes to the MySpace page...it gets frustrating.

Would you buy anything from them? Even though they have done alot of work in TV and films, nothing is playable, nothing is advertising the groups, nothing is telling me about them.

It even states that they are a collection of artists, so who done what? What if I wanted the artist who did CSI:NY...or even what track did they do on it? It could have been 5 seconds, we just don't know.

If you look in www.alexa.com (tells you about all intenet sites- traffic etc) it gets no traffic and it has been online since 1997.

Your site should have the following, if not do it now:

1- make sure you have a "contact me page"

2- make sure that you have a newsletter and a blog link.

3- have your own songs that can be played and downloaded directly through an MP3 player- too many links to find a track is painful.

4- have an "about you" page

5- pictures of the group/ you

6- gig footage/ youttube footage with gig dates and places (one advertises the other)

7- about each track/ album pages

8- what equipment you use

9- favourite artists (with a webpage per artist)

With this you then have a firm foundation for your own fully fledged website. It is a site that people would like to go to and to browse.

I have a list of sites that I visit daily. They are on a list that hardly changes. Hotmail, Blogger, My Website...and that is about it....it takes about 2 hours to do properly.

I also listen to music that I have downloaded some months ago.

When I go onto the Internet I don't want to buy something.

When I go onto the Internet I don't want to click on a flashy Ad

When I go on the Internet I have to delete 87 messages (counted today, it will be higher than that everyday after) telling me how I could earn $10k/ month.

Now out of all those things, many more I have left out, how do you make people go back to your site and how do you get them to actually download a music track?

If anyone says Podcasting or Blogging, you are right and wrong. I subscribed to a very influencial blog and after 6 weeks of 3 weekly texts I just couldnt be bothered. I found what I was looking for and it is such a chore keeping up to date with something that is hardley making a massive income.

This also becomes MySpace and Facebook, eventually that will become a chore, overcrowded and filled with marketing types.

Why should I bother searching for tracks that could be crap? Why should I use up my bandwidth to download a track on a weekly basis and delete my old music?

Unfortunately we live in a can't be bothered society and one that hasn't got time to actually do something.

Most of the sites on the Internet don't actually make any money- 3% do. CraigsList is massive but it only makes $4 million a year. Loads of cash to us but to a site that is invested in and has traffic coming out of its ears it is pretty poor. Most artists don't get contracts and the ones that do have to sell music, if not they are dropped.

The biggest secret EVER on the Net...one that you won't see in most marketing books?

These are the things you must think of.

The only reason sites are profitable is that there is trust between the person buying and the person selling.

I buy from Amazon even though many sites out there cost much less because I trust Amazon. Cold call selling- spam doesn't work. Emailing a bought list will not work well because of the lack of trust.

A marketer offered an email list $10 if they answered the ad...no one did. It was real as well.

So you need to gain trust with your prospects. This isn't one of those marketing messages that most people read then forget- read, and then re-read as it is important for your success/ survival.

This invariably means giving stuff away for free. If that is of good quality and is up to their expectations then you have passed a good stage. If you can get them to sign upto your newsletter then all the better- but don't use it as an advertisement medium and constantly sell. If it is not relevent or even slightly boring then you will have lost people.

You see, with newsletters once you have signed up and got their bonuses (what you subscribed in the first place for) what is the point of continuing? One of them I haven't had any tips yet- apart from two lines that repeated what they gave in the free subscription offer. However they are pretty good at packing the email with ads and affiliate links- stating they "highly recommend" the product.

I have subscribed to many marketing newsletters- 7 at the last count. I don't open them all. One offered one product another oftered another product. I went round picking them up and found what I was looking for. Also after 5 emails, they all became the same.

So this got me thinking. Your music newsletter must be relevent to you and promise stuff for the future. Obvious I know, but like the marketers have done- don't give away ebooks that release most of your ideas first time around. Don't go overboard. Offer a few MP3s that are not anywhere else but then list what can come up - tickets, discounts, albums, remixes, co-ops, internet meetings, etc.

This way you keep the people subscribed- they become special.

I emailed a musician (the one that did the Turrican music) and said I was a fan and his new music was great, did he email me back? No. Not even just a small thanks! I don't trust him because of that. I was going to buy his album because I liked the free music he gave away, but I won't. He didn't appreciate me as a fan or even thought that this could be a potential customer.

Answering emails is just the start to gaining newsletter subscribers.

Getting strangers to be friends and subscribers, getting friends to be trustful, and eventually getting trusted friends to be paying/ concert going/ merchandise loving friends is the primary goal.

Well, glad that you asked. I have made 2 free ebooks that are yours to download, without any email addresses.

The first one is:

20 Money Making Music BluePrints . It does what it says on the tin :) I have gone through 20 surefire ways of making money using (or not using) a website. It is aimed at musicians who need the money. It is over 80 pages long and features the best, so far, tried and trusted methods. Its totally free- why? Well I have had enough of music marketing types telling porky pies.



You can download and read it here for free (right click and then "save target as" on the link). The eBook is created in Adobe Acrobat file format. (PDF file). If you don't have the Adobe software for this file, you can download and install it for free.

The second is:

(The Best Kept) Secrets Of A Music Marketer. I have been working on a hour interview that I had with Kavit Haria who is director of the Music Mastermind Music Marketing Course. Having been on the BBC in the UK and in various Newspapers I thought Kavit would be an ideal source for knowledge picking. I quizzed Kavit on a number of topics including: hints and tips on blogging, social network sites (which are the best), gigging and alot more.



You can download the pdf, completely free, from here: Music Marketing Expert Interview. The eBook is created in Adobe Acrobat file format. (PDF file). If you don't have the Adobe software for this file, you can download and install it for free.