The Fan Relationship Pyramid

There are 5 levels of online relationship, and regardless of what we're selling, the goal is to satisfy our superfans first, then get the visitor or fan on the lower levels to make the transition up the ladder to the top level.

ReelSEO had a great article about the relationship pyramid that describes the various levels. I've changed them to reflect the music industry, but they are (from lowest to highest):

• Awareness: Know your music but don't regularly interact with you.

• Acquaintance: Has heard your music and sort of liked it and is willing to listen again.

• Friend: Regularly listens or visits your social media or websites, but hasn't engaged yet.

• Confidante: Has gone as far as to join your mailing list, become a friend or follower and even a regular listener of your music.

• Intimate: Has purchased your music or merch, regularly engages on forums or social media, sees every gig, and evangelizes about you to anyone that will listen.

As said before, the goal is to move the people on the lower rungs of the pyramid upwards, and this is done by offering more targeted content. The easiest way to do that is with video; either a music video, behind the scenes video at a gig, or during rehearsal or recording. This allows you to connect on a very emotional level as humans respond to moving pictures and pictures of other human beings more than any other medium.

So keep doing those videos. They're helping you in more ways than one.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

5 Ways To Get Free Music Promotion

Artists and bands often complain about the cost of promotion, but thanks to the Internet there are more ways than ever to do it for free. Marcus Taylor outlined 49 ways over on Music Think Tank. Here are 5 of them.


#1 Host a free virtual show With Stageit.com.

Stageit.com has long been a favourite music marketing tool. The fact that it’s free is just the icing on the cake. If you’ve not used Stageit before, it’s essential a ‘Skype for bands’, where you can perform gigs from your kitchen to fans all over the World. Many good friends have used it and also found that it was a good way to raise a few hundred dollars for a couple of hours of performing.

#2 Add a Bands In Town app to Your Facebook Page.

BandsinTown is a must-have app for your Facebook Page. In short, it displays all of your upcoming gig dates in a slick-looking Facebook App. A great way of passively raising awareness of your upcoming shows.

#3 Create a FanDistro project to help charities & reward your fans.

FanDistro is another favourite. After creating your project page and sending it out to your fans, each fan receives a unique link, which they can send to their friends. If their friends then share your music or buy any of your products, they are rewarded with free merch and 20% of the sales go to a charity in the fan’s name. FanDistro is a brilliant way of increasing your social media engagement – artists like Cosmo Jarvis generated ~19 new fans for each fan who shared his music on the site!

#4 Build an app for your music with BandApp.

Created by Adam Perry, BandApp is a great platform for getting a free mobile app for your band.

#5 Upload your music to Soundcloud.

Soundcloud is arguably one of the best sites to host your music on, especially now that they’ve announced heavy integration with many of Google’s services. If you haven’t already, upload your music on Soundcloud, tag it well, and encourage fans to leave comments on the tracks.

Read the rest of Marcus' list on Music Think Tank. Many are UK-centric, but there's still lots of great ideas if you don't reside there.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Top Concert Draws

Here are the top concert draws as of last week, courtesy of Pollstar. The list indicates this weeks ranking, last week's ranking in parenthesis, total revenue, and average ticket price in the last column.

There are a couple of things to note here. First of all, most of the acts are decidedly "old school," although Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars are strong. Secondly, the prices for the country artists are very reasonable, costing between $31 and $40, although Bad Company/Lynyrd Skynyrd and Styx/REO Speedwagon/Ted Nugent are reasonable as well.

1. (1) The Rolling Stones; $7,772,849;                                    $345.49.

2. (New) Paul McCartney; $3,620,049;                                    $131.27.

3. (2) Taylor Swift; $3,021,717;                                                  $86.51.

4. (3) Kenny Chesney; $2,246,701;                                           $75.53.

5. (4) Fleetwood Mac; $1,427,403;                                             $110.90.

6. (New) Phish; $1,391,413;                                                         $48.76.

7. (5) Justin Bieber; $1,267,409;                                                  $80.71.

8. (6) Dave Matthews Band; $1,134,333;                                   $55.10.

9. (8) Bruno Mars; $1,029,608;                                                     $71.36.

10. (9) New Kids On The Block; $830,439;                                $65.06.

11. (New) Blake Shelton; $672,657;                                           $32.24.

12. (10) Tim McGraw; $586,428;                                                  $38.25.

13. (11) Brad Paisley; $569,683;                                                  $36.13.

14. (New) Rascal Flatts; $567,025;                                              $40.02.

15. (12) Carrie Underwood; $527,808;                                        $70.00.

16. (14) Barry Manilow; $377,596;                                                $67.98.

17. (13) Widespread Panic; $376,122;                                         $47.11.

18. (16) Bad Company / Lynyrd Skynyrd; $311,304;                  $31.44.

19. (17) The Postal Service; $249,253;                                         $41.27.

20. (18) Styx / REO Speedwagon / Ted Nugent; $225,939;       $35.27.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Spotify Versus Pandora: Which Is Better?

Most people that have switched to streaming music use either Spotify or Pandora. That may change in a month or so when iRadio comes to life, but right now both companies hold the lead in the streaming part of the business. But which one is better? Here's a quick comparison.

Spotify: available in 21 countries
Pandora: available in 3 countries

Spotify: 20 million active users
Pandora: 47 million active users

Spotify: 20 million songs
Pandora: 1 million songs

Spotify: users can search for specific songs
Pandora: users refine their favorite channels with "thumbs up" or "thumbs down"

Spotify:after 6 months for free, users are limited to 10 hours per month
Pandora: basic music app is free, but with ads

Spotify: users can create custom playlists
Pandora: suggests songs so you can discover new music

Spotify: integrates with Facebook so users find new music based on friend's recommendations
Pandora: rewind and repeat not possible

So who's the winner? There's pros and cons with both, but there's enough cons that both are open to some competition. With a lot of that soon coming from some heavy hitters in the business, it's no doubt that the streaming landscape will be different by this time next year.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Mobile Music Booms

Here's an interesting infographic about the state of mobile music today.

As you can see, 31% of all smartphone users stream music, and 79% of them are listening to Pandora!

The other interesting thing is that the US is only #5 in smartphone users listening to music, behind China, Russia, South Korea and Brazil. We use our phones for a lot more than communicating these days.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.