Investigating How New Media Channels Have Created Opportunities For Popular Music Artists

The digital age has brought about many changes within the music industry in both how we receive and how we consume music. It has been well documented that the music industry has had a hard time trying to keep up. In this article I will be looking at the way in which new media channels have opened up opportunities for popular music artists to convey themselves and capture an audience through some the new channels that have opened up from the creation of the Internet.

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Artist Launches Platform to Streamline Music Promotion

Music United, which launches on February 14^th, is a new web-based service aimed at helping independent musicians to streamline their marketing and promotional process.

Music United was founded in 2011 by Jay Gulotta, a musician who was excited about the opportunities created by social media, but was frustrated by the fractured nature of social channels.   “I found myself spending more time making people aware that we were around, posting to 5, 10, 20 or more sites, and less time actually writing, making and playing music.  It was really frustrating, actually,” said Gulotta 

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Online marketing for new bands

A quick bit of advice on how both new and established bands can improve their online marketing efforts to better engage their audience.

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Music Marketing 2.0: Bethel Music Leverages Affiliate Links to Boost Revenue

Musical group Bethel Music now earns additional revenue on top of music sales by promoting its newest album–For the Sake of the World–through refer.ly iTunes affiliate links, giving them more resources to make the music that they and their fans love.

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Take this Idea – The Buy One, Give One Album

I have always been fascinated by the buy one, give one model of doing business. As far as I know, it was pioneered by Tom’s Shoes and it’s brilliantly simple. When you buy a pair of Tom’s shoes for yourself, another pair is given to someone in need. It works because people like doing nice things for people, especially if they don’t have to make any additional effort. So I was thinking recently how this model might apply to music. While it’s no secret that I think emerging artists should not charge for their music, I had an idea for those who are either not ready for that idea or who are already selling enough that they don’t have to give anything away. It’s simple – the “Buy One, Give One” album.

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How To Take Your Twitter Promotion To The Next Level - Free Ebook

Hi guys, just a short post for you today. I wanted to share with you a free guide I’ve just written on promoting your music with Twitter. In fact it’s not just about promoting your music with Twitter, it’s about how to take your Twitter promotion to a whole new level, and get in front of a load of fans of your genre pretty much on tap!

You can skip to the bottom of this post if want to download this free ebook now (Click the blue button) and don’t want to read the background info.

From what I’ve seen, Twitter is one of the best forms of online promotion you can do as a musician. It’s easy for new musicians to get in front of potential fans relatively fast (Faster and easier then say building up your Facebook fan page), but it also does a great job of driving fans to any new material you may put out there.

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Relationships Are The New Distribution

Social Media superhero Chris Brogan recently wrote a post on the basics – the 4 P’s of marketing(product, price, place, and promotion) and talked about how many people don’t spend enough time on their Product, and try to make up for it in Promotion. If that doesn’t work they try competing on Price. But rarely is much time spent thinking about Place.

This got me thinking about how music is marketed, and how absolutely right he is. A lot of indie musicians tend to spend the majority of their time on Product and Promotion, with Price usually being the standard $0.99 per track. The common mistake is in thinking that Place, which is your distribution, is taken care of once you’ve gotten your music up on iTunes or Bandcamp.

I think we need to start thinking of distribution as more than just where people download or buy your music from, and maybe shuffle a few P’s around in the process.

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Rock The Biz - watch all about: "Tips&Tricks", "Future Of Music", "Income" and more

Finally all our chapters of Rock The Biz - the documentary about the new musicbusiness in Europe - are online. Feel free to watch here 4 further chapters for free:

Tips & Tricks:

Professional musicians, labels and player in the musicbusiness give hints, on what to focus, go’s and no go’s and many more

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Put a Ring on her Finger- The Social Web & Music Marketing are Married

The world is moving at a faster pace than ever, and technology is the cattle driver of the modern world taking us all to magnificent new lands. Innovation is changing the way we live our lives on what seems like a daily basis. The landscape for which/where/how we do business is in constant motion. The challenge is no longer ‘how do we get there’ its ‘teach me how to drive.’ I am a heavy enthusiast for the marriage between tech and business.

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Rock The Biz -The Movie: Chapter 3 "Selfrelease"

In the chapter “selfrelease” european bands, labels and player in the music biz talk about the most important tools, go’s and no go’s if you want to release your music on your own.

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Yimup powers independent artists from all over the world to set up their own online music business.

Yimup, (www.yimup.net) a music industry technology company has launched a new service called “Yimup Music Platform”, which is notable in that it lets independent artists from all over the world to sell music directly to their fans from their own web music distribution platform, rather than linking through to third-party retailers.

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Stephen Fry, blogging and musicians

Musicians and bands should take notice of Stephen Fry’s comments on BBC’s Analysis programme “Stephen Fry: The Internet and Me”. Fry points out that Twitter and its ilk have made it easy for celebs to bypass the press offices and gossip columnists, and tell the world what they’re doing as soon as it happens. Why though, are there not many bands and musicians on Twitter? Why aren’t there many bands from Manchester (UK) not tweeting that they’re doing a gig on Friday night? No DJs either, plugging their new set?

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Future Hit.DNA - 15 Tips To Craft Hit Songs In The Digital World (Written by a music executive insider)

Future Hit.DNA is a book that provides a road map to the digital landscape focusing on tips for artists wanting a chart topping hit and how playing into new technologies can result in higher royalties. This is a must read for all songwriters, artists, producers, and music marketing people in general as it will give insight on how people discover and consume music in the digital world.

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Is Physical Distribution Worth It for Indies?

Updated on October 7, 2009 by Scott Olson

The slow death of record stores and the increased opportunity afforded to emerging artists are two stories that we have all become familiar with. Distributors of CD’s have no doubt fallen on hard times as well. Given the cost of distribution, and the fact that record stores are disappearing from the map, does it make sense for Indie artists and labels to consider getting a traditional distribution deal as a major goal? 

Existing retailers are getting more exclusive. Rising “music retailers” Wal-Mart and Best Buy only stock that which they know will sell millions.  And in place of an increasingly bland music retail scene, artists are making it easier to get their music from them directly (or at least by buying their CD of amazon).

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