Modern music marketing is about the artist-fan relationship
In the mid 90’s i had been lucky to be involved with some major rap band releases. As radios were very slow to react, we use to manufacture few hundred thousands of promo CDs, stickers etc for street marketing campaigns. Means that we used to pay almost half a million dollar to be able to give away music, just to get our new band heard by the kids ….
Things done changed, new digital ecosystem is offering services for free that used to be so expensive
… Make sure you are getting the best out of it:
- Get out the traditional album marketing path. Release yourself, Release more music than a traditional label can handle. Remember the mixtape era ?
- Give away music for free, donations, feedbacks, email addresses …Download is the new radio !
- Host your music in one single place and publish it across the internet. Tracking streams and download is the new soundscan.
- Release Objects, Clothes, art, picture discs, books, connected devices, handcraft records… whatever will match your brand and please your fans. CD era might be over but music will never be … digital only … 
originaly posted
on my blog here http://highsnobiety.com/columns/olivierrosset/