Music and merch. Bands over-think design. Fans want big loud logos.

If you think fans will buy obscure, under-branded and highly unique items, think again…

I just read another great interview from Rick Goetz (Musician Coaching).  This interview was with John Mathiason from Cinder Block.  Cinder Block handles merch for artists like Kid Rock, the Dixie Chicks, the Pixies and many others. 

It’s probably safe to say that John knows what he’s talking about when he claims fans prefer big logos.  Here’s a quote:

I discovered something early on in terms of how product development works, and it was really interesting. Bands would over-think designs and what they wanted to present to their fan base, and it would always be something cool and indie and something somebody in the band would wear. The problem was, nobody would ever buy it. It looked cool, and it would be something somebody in the band would wear, but the fans weren’t interested in it. They wanted something that had a big giant logo on it and is some sort of statement about, “I’m a member of this club.”  If you’re walking in with some t-shirt that doesn’t say the band’s name on it and is hidden someplace, you’re not really expressing that. What always ends up selling is a band’s logo.

The entire post is informative and worthwhile reading for any artist.

Three Steps To Inexpensively Winning The Search Engine Game

Sites that are interlinked together are subwebs (subsets) within the World Wide Web.  Search engines rank and score websites by measuring the authority and the authenticity of every subweb on the Internet.
 
The stronger your subweb is, the higher your site will rank against keywords, phrases and concepts (as categorized and tagged) that occur on both your site and within your site’s ENTIRE subweb.
 
Authority and authenticity are weighed and measured by search engines that use complex and evolving algorithms that size (metaphorically speaking) the entire width, height, depth, complexity and the population density of your entire subweb.

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Create An Elaborate Plan

The name of your brand, the URL you use, the first word you type, the sequence in which you release your songs, your lyrics, the images you feature, the videos you release, the messages you type, and everything you put into your online presence should be part of an elaborate plan to seduce fans.

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Swami Sivers on Leadership

In case you have not seen this video on leadership lessons by Derek Sivers, have a look.  This video is destined to be a classic, and it’s one of those YouTube videos that parents should consider showing to their children.

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The five most crucial points for any new artist just starting out...

The following was copied from the interview pertaining to Music Think Tank Andrew Dubber and I gave to the BBC.

1) Decontextualize first, promote second. Artists are in love with their songs/music, and they should be. However, prior to throwing a year of your life into promotion, force yourself to get anonymous feedback from at least thirty friends, twenty artists, and from ten industry professionals. If most love your songs, then promote. Otherwise, go back to the classroom/studio and learn how to make “better” music first.

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Man wins Grammy award and then racks up seventy-eight plays on MySpace the next day.

Several days ago, Allan Shadow published a colorful tribute post about David “Honeyboy” Edwards and how he received a Lifetime Achievement (Grammy) award last week. 

Here’s a ninety-four year old man that has given his life to songwriting and music.  How could we (humans) not be somewhat interested in this story?  At least that’s what I thought.

I counted seventy-eight plays on MySpace (where Mr. Edwards’ online presence is maintained) - twenty-four hours later.  It’s kind of shocking at first, but I guess it’s not all that surprising when you think about our culture.

If you have fans, an audience, Twitter followers or Facebook friends, please let’s show this man the ATTENTION he deserves. 

Congratulations Mr. Edwards.

The Flat Earth Conundrum

Here’s a Monday morning riddle for you…

Do you believe crowds of humans will ever (or do now) sway as much control over the rate and depth of media dissemination as the established media machine does now?

It’s easier than ever to make studio-quality songs and great looking videos.

You can easily distribute your music and creations worldwide.

Through promotion tools and strategies, you can continually increase the rate and depth in which your media spreads throughout the world.

However, just as there‘s always someone that’s stronger, faster, smarter or wealthier than any one of us, will there always be entities that can push media faster and deeper into the marketplace than ALL of us (humans) networked together?

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The Song/Artist Adoption Formula - 2010 Update

This in an update to a previous post.

To the extent that a recording artist (versus an entertainer) is the sum of his or her songs, I am going to stipulate that song-adoption equates to artist-adoption.

I effectively use this formula when working with industry startups and artists to concisely communicate (usually on a bar napkin) the challenges that artists face as they attempt to obtain marketplace traction for their songs.

I have updated the formula (below) to recognize the importance of placing unknown songs into a series of songs that are familiar to listeners (the Adjacent Song Factor).

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TuneCore politely smacks down TommyBoy and Nielsen

About 1,500 artists break the “obscurity line” each year. Less than 1% do it on their own.  Not so fast says Jeff Price, the CEO of TuneCore. 

Seems like TuneCore has the success measurement numbers that Nielsen is (completely) missing.  Read Jeff’s latest post.  Quotes below:

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It's everything except our music that will make us the most popular place to hear music in the future.

In a recent post, radio industry guru Mark Ramsey (occasionally posts on MTT) offers this advice to the radio industry:

Radio competes in “a world where your music can be duplicated - song for song - by an endless parade of competitors, each more novel (and with better PR) than the next.  It’s everything except our music that will make us the most popular place to hear music in the future.”

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About 1,500 artists break the "obscurity line" each year. Less than 1% do it on their own.

January 15, 2009:  Tom Silverman (TommyBoy Entertainment) tells Rick Goetz (Musician Coaching - great blog by the way) that in 2008, 1,500 releases broke the “obscurity line” (sold over 10,000 albums). 

Out of the 1,500 obscurity-breaking releases, 227 artists broke the “obscurity line” for the first time ever.

Out of the 227 first-timers, 14 artists did it own their own; approximately 106 were signed to a major; the rest were signed to indies.

Check out Tom Silverman’s New Music Seminar in LA on February 2nd.

To be completely correct, the title above should have said: “1,500 releases break the “obscurity line” each year.”  No more posting late night for me.  Too many errors and typos.

More evidence that the major labels have you by the nuts and bolts...

In a nutshell (no pun intended), this research reminds us that even if someone could find (for consumers) all the best (not rubbish) new independent music, those exposing new music to consumers must utilize established major label content to create a satisfactory listening experience (for most people).

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High margin digital music products that won't be stolen...

It’s easy for me to imagine high margin digital music products that can’t be stolen (as they will be infinitely attached to some server somewhere).  If you have not seen this already, take a look at the Sports Illustrated’s tablet edition (concept video below).  Start planning your digital music industry future now.  Like all things internet, this stuff will eventually be accessible to everyone.  And, here are eight things I would put into one of these products…

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Reconsider promotion. The faders are coming. The faders are coming.

If you have not tried MOG’s new streaming music service, then take a few minutes and watch the demonstration video.  MOG’s streaming music service features a fader that enables music fans to simply adjust the flow of new (relatively unknown) music that’s inserted into any MOG music stream.  I believe Echonest powers this feature.  Enabling music fans to completely control their music experiences is no longer a pipe dream, it’s now a must-have feature that will appear everywhere over the next twenty-four months.

Quality faders will change the promotion game.
I think it’s relatively easy to enable consumers to control just about any part of their musical journey, but what about quality?  Quality is subjective (or maybe it’s not?), however with artists creating over a million songs a year, the absence of a quality fader (filter) reduces the flow of new music to a trickle (the new music fader stays pinned to the left), as no music consumer wants to be burdened with the need to sift through a truckload of poorly written or poorly produced songs.  (Note: I believe Echonest is already (somewhat) filtering for quality (hotness)?)

In my opinion, a quality filter-fader that everyone can trust - changes (ends) the promotion game for everyone.  When we get to a point where quality, combined with other attributes, can be faded in and out, the entire industry will terminate the marketing department and hire a gaggle of people that can improve quality (subjective or not, it will me measurable).  Promotion will become something you (possibly) do after you measure “quality”, not before.

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