Top 10 Musician Mistakes: You Don't Leverage Your Fans as Marketers

As an indie artist today, you’re most likely in charge of your own marketing. You probably don’t have a record label planning your releases or scheduling your social media for the week, and you certainly don’t have any spare cash for a big marketing campaign. Marketing can seem like a completely daunting task if its just you and maybe a manager trying to get the word out, but you actually have a whole team of marketers just waiting to share your music – your fans!

With the constant presence of social media and the internet, most music fans today are bombarded with more information than they can possibly process. On top of that, new technology has enabled just about anyone to get online and call themselves a musician. As a result, most music fans look to recommendations from trusted sources for new music. These trusted sources could be a good music blog but more times than not it comes from a friend. Think about how you found some of your favorite artists. How many of them did you discover from a friend’s recommendation? Or someone you trust?

The key here is authenticity. Making it real and transparent and interesting. More people will check out your new album after a friend recommends it than would after a flashy TV commercial. This means you don’t need to dish out thousands for a big marketing campaign. The most effective form of marketing is completely within your reach financially!

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Introducing StudioVox

We’d like to introduce you to StudioVox – The professional social network for creative professionals – and invite all Music Think Tank raders to join our private beta. 

StudioVox (www.studiovox.com) is built from the ground up for creative professionals. It’s not just another profile site. It’s the only social community that encompasses creatives, agencies, industry and fans on a single platform. 

StudioVox offers unlimited music, image and file uploads, so you can express your creativity without restriction.

Here’s our intro video - turn up the volume, set it to full screen and enjoy! 

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What Motivates Fans To Support Independent Artists? Or, Help Me Finish My Dissertation!

My name’s Jimmy Richards, and I’m a final year student at the University of the West of Scotland, studying for a BA (Hons) in Commercial Music. In order to finish my course, I am currently writing my dissertation on what motivates the average music fan to support an independent artist or band.

To this end, I’ve produced a short online questionnaire, asking a few questions about to what extent music fans, on average, support their favourite artists. It would be a great help to my study if the readers here at MTT would be willing to take a minute to fill in this questionnaire, and perhaps share it amongst their fans/colleagues.

The questionnaire can be found here. Please note that by filling in this questionnaire, you are granting me permission to use your answers in my research. No personal data is required.

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Why All Independent Musicians Need A Mailing List

Mailing lists, one of the most under used tools of an independent musician. But why is this when major labels have been using it to good effect for so many years? It seems no one’s let the “little guy” know of the power of mailing lists, instead allowing them to carry on thinking social networking is the only way to effectively communicate with your fans online. However, this simply isn’t the case.

If you’re not sure why mailing lists are effective, here’s a quick summery:

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Why All Musicians Need To Have The Business Know How

The music industry, as we all know, is constantly changing. That’s a dead issue. Forget about digital downloading and piracy, they can both be overcome with the correct business strategies. So, what I want to talk about instead is a observation I’ve been noticing for a while now; There is a serious lack of business knowledge in the music industry.

When I say this, I’m not really talking about major labels (Although some of their signings do make you wonder), I’m more about the grass route independent musicians. There are many with enough talent to satisfy even the harshest critics, yet they’ll never quite fulfil their potential. It may be that they’re not sure how to effectively promote their music, or it may be that they’re not sure how to manage their budget. Either way, without at least some business knowledge you won’t get very far at all.

The thing is, a lot of musicians don’t realise they have to take the time to learn business side of the music industry. Many just go with the flow and learn as they go along. Now personally, I’ve never been of fan of making mistakes and THEN learning from them. If it happens, so be it. But I’d much rather learning as much as I can in the beginning so I can get things done correctly the first time around. This’ll keep your journey sailing smoothly, and save a lot of time and effort on re-doing things from previous mistakes.

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