June 7, 2010 Well, what is a good digital music strategy ? Part 3 - Monetize
Here is the follow up of this article about how to achieve a successful digital music strategy, from social networks to SEO and viral marketing. Stay tuned : two more articles are soon to come !
By Virginie Berger (@virberg, www.digitalmusic.tumblr.com), former head of marketing at Mypace France and now music marketer.
We are now discussing how you can succeed in monetizing the content you produce as a musician…
The complete article is available in PDF and on Slideshare
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3 - Monetize
Let me give you a tiny advice: It’s great to get an iTunes link on your site, but it’s even better if your visitor can buy directly from your site.
First, because of proximity: (s)he wants to buy from you.
Second, because it might be a compulsive purchase. Don’t get a “chance” to lose him/her by sending him/her on another platform.
Third, not everybody is on iTunes or another platform.
Check out: the last UK study shows that almost 60% of 15-24 years old have no clues about legal platforms. What a shame if (s)he pirates somewhere else when (s)he was about to buy it on your site.xt
A - About iTunes
If you use Zimbalam, it will take care of submitting your tracks on legal downloading platform for about $/£30 (I don’t work for Zimbalam either).
6 ways to be noticed on iTunes:
> Creating an Imix (playlist)
> Marking your Imix
> Commenting your Imix
> Bringing it up regularly
> Writing album reviews
> Doing covers
B - About Bandcamp
By far, the best site for an artist (again I don’t work for Bandcamp).
To sum it up: BC helps independent artists to sell their music. The cherry on the cake: BC is now available on your artist site. You can use BC page to FB or Twitter thanks to widgets.
1. Layout: make it clean and simple. Your users know where your music is and can download it.
2. Free of charge: for now, 100% of profits are yours (if GCS haven’t changed)
3. Emails: on BC, you can either sell your music or give it for downloading, or leave some tracks for free and some others for purchase.
4. You can even use a PWYW system (Pay What You Want) since BC allows micropayment. Therefore, each time BC sends a free track to a user, you collect its email…
5. Stats: you will know who comes onto your page, who listens to what, at which frequency, for how long and where (on your BC page, FB widget, etc.)
6. Distribution: you will be able to distribute your music differently. It’s also a better alternative to iTunes. Your public is different. You sell what you want, when and where you want, @ your chosen price.
For example:
> You join physical sale and offer “digital” (either the opposite way or together)
> You can go for a special offer treatment (release of an album: CD @ $5, or CD + Dig + T-Shirt @ $10)
> You can use vouchers. I.e.: I bought an Exsonvaldes CD and they gave me a voucher so I could download some tracks from BC. In regard of direct sales on your site (merch, tracks, box sets).
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Stay tuned ! The two last parts of the article are to be published soon !
The complete article is also available in PDF and on Slideshare
Email : virberg at gmail.com
Twitter : @virberg
Reader Comments (4)
Great Article, I can't wait for the next one!
oconnorrecords artist Shannan Blystone I-tunes did an answer video to Mia Rose and got 21,000 views
For selling digital content on your own site, I've been really happy with Linklok & suggest checking them out. I think you can set up your whole site for a one time $35 fee.
Also if you are going to offer links to iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, etc then why not join their affiliate programs so you can make an extra $0.10 per sale?
Another thing that's been important to me personally with my onsite digital distribution (Silber Records if you must know) is that you should set a fair price meaning that you get paid a similar amount to what you get paid from iTunes (so about $6 instead of $10) & that you can give your fans more content (I have digital pdf booklets & occasionally other content as well) & you get to collect their information which you don't get from third party sales.
Excellent information guys. Another great resource if you have your own product is ejunkie.com. Their site is pretty straight forward and you can get a product on their really easy.
Hope this helps.
~ Jerry
LearnGuitarFastAndEasy.com