Music 3.0 Music Industry Blog

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

8 Essential Facebook Promotion Tips

Jennifer Moire wrote a great post on the essential Hypebot blog a while back that outlined the 8 tricks for publicists using Facebook. I changed the title because I think that it applies to anyone promoting on Facebook, not only publicists, but the body of the post is the same. This is some really valuable info that can be useful immediately if you use Facebook as a promotional tool (which you should be doing).
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A rash of recent social media conferences inspired us to compile these tips to help public relations professionals get the most out of the social media site.

Thursday is the best day of the week to get the most visibility for a Facebook post.

Release major stories in the early morning. If you post between 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST, you risk your content getting pushed down by news feeds and other traffic.

When sharing stories, include the full link on Facebook — that’s 300 percent more likely to get clicked on than any shortened address.

Use both the like and send Facebook buttons on your site.

Want the secret behind making it into your friends’ “top news” feed? It’s based on an algorithm known as Edge Rank. Use words like “today,” and “limited-time only,” to increase its Edge Rank.

According to a recent study from Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, Facebook is among the leading drivers of traffic to 21 news web sites. So when sharing a good media story, don’t forget to leverage the leading social network.

Want to know which words are most “shareable” on Facebook? Try words like “best,” “most,” and those that explain, such as “why,” and “how.”

Facebook may be a better platform for making a video go viral than other social media platforms, probably because the site makes it easy to embed multimedia content into a post.

There's a lot of great information available via the links, so take a look at those as well.

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

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Booking Info Section Of Your Website

Dave Cool posted an interesting article over on musicthinktank.com the other day about "How To Get A Booking Agent To Book Your Band." While all the information is good, I especially liked the part about adding a section on your website called "Booking Info" or "Book My Band."

As I've advocated here and in my Music 3.0 book many times, your website should be the center of your online universe, with all social media pointing back to it. That doesn't mean it should be for fans only, there's a B2B (business to business) element to it as well, and that's providing an agent or promoter all the info and tools needed to make a decision on whether to book you or not. Here's what the article suggested.
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If you’re generating some buzz in your local scene, make sure that if an agent does check out your band that you have the right information on your website for them to see. Create a “Book My Band” section on your website, which would be similar to an online press kit, but it would include things like:

Statistics about the # of newsletter subscribers you have, Facebook fans and Twitter followers
Average attendance for your shows: are you regularly selling out 50-seat venues? 100-seat venues? Put that information somewhere on the page.
Mention which markets you play in
Have a photo gallery with lots of good quality live pics (any photos that include crowds in packed venues are a bonus)
Post good quality live videos (good video quality, good audio quality, packed rooms, minimal talking. Audience sing-a-longs are a bonus!)
Stage plot
Set list
Quotes from media that mention your live show
Quotes from venue bookers
Quotes from fans about your live shows

Other than that, you should always blog about your live shows. Talk about the turnout, the crowd reaction, and post plenty of pics and live video whenever you can. All of this will help create the impression that you’re a hard-working band that takes their live shows seriously.

Read the entire article at musicthinktank.com.

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Sunday, June 5, 2011

7 Ways To Sell More Merch

Mike Venti recently wrote a great article on weallmakemusic.com entitled 7 Ways To Sell More Merch. In it he has some excellent suggestions to increase your merch sales, which is one of the keys to surviving in this Music 3.0 age we live in. Here are 5 of the 7 ways from the article. You can read the entire article here.
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Location, Location, Location
The visibility of your table makes all the difference. If you’re set up in a dark, shadowy corner of the club, not nearly as much foot traffic will make its way to your table. Many concert goers may miss it entirely. For maximum effect, have your table in a well lit, high traffic area. Be sure to make sure your table’s placement by is alright with them. If you can set up by the venue’s entrance/exit, for example, everybody will have to walk by it at least twice that night.

Convenience
Just because somebody’s spent all their cash on drinks doesn’t mean you should miss out on a sale.
Make sure that you can process credit cards, either with an old-fashioned swiper or through digital card readers on your smartphone.

Great Deals
Nobody can pass up a great deal, so make sure your to bundle your merch in ways that seem like a bargain. Instead of selling a CD for $10 and a T-shirt for $20, sell them together for $25.

Signage
You should have a sign (or signs) with your all your prices. That sign should be written in print large enough that it’s legible from a few feet away. Introverted people and browsers like to see all the pricing information without having to strike up a conversation with the merch person. If you’re fortunate enough to have a very busy table, visible prices also help your merch person focus on selling rather than reciting prices over and over again.

Freebies
Offering free stickers, guitar picks, buttons and other small promotional items is a great way to encourage people to gather around your merch table and make it stand out. Large crowds naturally help attract even more people over to your table, giving you the opportunity to make even more sales.

Read the entire article on weallmakemusic.com.

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Thursday, June 2, 2011

Prince And Gaga Prove The New Music Business Model

By now I'm sure that everyone's heard about Lady Gaga selling 1.1 million copies of her "Born This Way" album last week. On the surface this seems like a huge number, especially for an artist these days, but there's more here than meets the eye.

First of all, the digital sales were about 660,000, but 440,000 of them came from Amazon's two day $.99 promotion. This set a one-week SoundScan record for most digital sales, and became the eighth best-selling U.S. digital album of all time. But the significant thing here is the price, 99 cents, which we'll get to in a minute.

Next in the news was the fact that Prince just ended his 19 day run playing the Forum in Los Angeles. What's significant here is that the majority of the tickets in the 18,000 seat venue were priced at only $25.

Why is that important? Because it shows a new trend in the entertainment business were price is a motivating factor in purchases.

Way back before music became the commodity that it is today, everyone felt they got a fair value when purchasing either an album or a concert ticket. The price was cheap enough that if you bought something that you didn't like, you didn't feel ripped off or filled with buyer's remorse. It was easy enough to buy the next album or a ticket to the concert without feeling it in your pocketbook too much.

Of course all this changed when Wall Street became involved in the music business after it smelled big money in the 80's. The prices for premium artist's CD's were double what consumers were used to paying for vinyl records, so if you bought one that you didn't like or only had one good song on it, you indeed felt the financial pain of a near worthless purchase.

Likewise for concerts. It was nothing for a music fan to go to several concerts a month during that era. They were cheap enough that you didn't feel like you'd have to miss lunch for the next two weeks to pay for it, and you felt comfortable about spending money to see a new unfamiliar act.

Of course that all changed when the price of tickets, concessions, parking and service charges went to the sky. Music lover's buying habits slowed to only a show or two a year instead of every month. In it's greed, the industry tried to milk every single dime from the consumer at the expense of a making them a returning customer.

With Gaga signing on for the Amazon promotion, it proves that consumers are more price conscious than ever with music, and will buy in large number if the price is right. With Prince lowering the ticket price to $25, and doing a good business in doing so, it proves that people will still show up if the price is right.

Although the numbers are unofficial, it seems that prince sold as few as 6,000 seats on some nights, but that's still enough to make money since both his and the venue's overhead was amortized over the number of dates played. Gaga still sold more than 500,000 albums at $13 to 16, despite the 99 cent promotion (although her number have steeply fallen since), once again proving that online, the more you give it away (or almost give it away), the more you sell.

It's about time that the industry learns that price is a barrier to sales. It's hard to believe they didn't know that in the first place.

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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Making "Like" More Likeable

Danny Sullivan wrote an interesting post on Mashable recently about how Facebook "Likes" can help website and blog traffic. For example, Facebook says Like buttons get 3 to 5 times more clicks if:

Versions that show thumbnails of friends are used.
They allow people to add comments.
If they appear at both the top and bottom of articles.
If they appear near visual content like videos or graphics.

Facebook also stied that video site Metacafe placed a Like button above its videos, in addition to being below, as the arrows point to in this screenshot:

After doing this, use of the Like button and traffic from Facebook increased. Facebook reports that:

The number of daily likes more than tripled, going from an average of 2,000 likes per day to over 7,000 likes.
Daily referral traffic from Facebook to Metacafe doubled, going from about 60,00 to 120,000.
Total Facebook actions (likes, shares, comments) rose to 20,000 per day.

The "Like" button is becoming more and more important in social networking, so it's worth incorporating into all of your online presence, if possible.

Read the entire article here.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Radio Promotion Today

Rick Goetz posted a great interview with independent radio promo guy Drew Murray on his musiccoaching.com site. The interview provides a number interesting tidbits about the state of music radio today. Here are a few excerpts.

On not needing a song on the radio to be successful:

At Sanctuary – and Sanctuary thought of itself as a management company first and a label second – that was the mantra that was definitely drilled into us: radio is the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. Even at the beginning of the Digital Age – because it was 2001 when I went to go work for them – that mantra was still the basis. They used Iron Maiden as the example: “Iron Maiden can sell out stadiums and arenas across the planet without a song on the radio.” If they do get a song on the radio, they’re that much better. And again, they were huge with touring and merchandising. The idea of not needing to have a song on the radio to be successful was drilled into my head every day for the seven years I worked at Sanctuary.

On new radio ratings technologies:

I think a lot of this is still evolving, because some of that technology has only been around for about four or five years. It only became national about two years ago. So, radio stations are still figuring out how to read the raw data. I’ll give you a prime example of an argument I had with a Hot AC station, which targets to adult women. Your typical listener might be in her car, driving to the mall. The number one single on your station this week might be P!nk’s “Perfect,” and as radio station, you are playing that song because you know it is doing great for you. But this listener gets to the mall while this song is on and turns off her car radio. The first store she goes into to buy something for her daughter is Hot Topic. So, according to this tracking technology, if it is the be all, end all for you as a radio station, you’re going to drop this particular playlist and add Metallica, because it’s getting played in Hot Topic, and therefore it’s what she’s listening to now. The main point is, you have to be able to interpret the data and what is really going on. This is what radio people will complain about, and it’s always been a problem with the technology when you break it down: The sample size is still tiny. I don’t know the exact number, but I think that for the New York metropolitan area, which has 15 million people, there are maybe 500 people with people meters. One person could have an effect on over a million listeners.

On radio being open to independent music:

It depends. There are success stories, but mostly in the rock formats these days. It’s mostly alternative or active rock or Triple A with singer/songwriters. Those formats are definitely more open to independent music than Top 40 and Hot AC. Those two and also country are very tough if you’re not signed to a major label.

Read the rest of this great interview at musiccoaching.com.

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Monday, May 30, 2011

7 YouTube Alternatives

Whenever we think of online video, we always think of Youtube, but I bet you'd be surprised to learn that there are over 50 other online video networks in the US alone. Most of them are very targeted and specialized, but there are a few that are clear competitors for Youtube's throne (although there's not much chance of them overthrowing the king anytime soon).

Here's a great article from Mashable regarding 7 Youtube alternatives that are definitely checking out.

1. Blip.tv

What it is: Online video with a strong slant toward webisodes, web series, and other serial content. Blip users rarely post one-off videos — in fact, Blip encourages regular content — so quality is usually pretty high.

Features: Supports most video formats and has 1 GB of storage per user. There is a pro account for more storage and better conversion rates. Any user can sign up for an advertising account that splits ad revenue 50/50. There’s a dashboard to let you plan your web series in advance, share your videos, and use analytics. Blip also distributes through most major video platforms (including YouTube), so maximizing reach is less of a concern.

Why Blip.tv?: Use it if you’re planning on starting a series and want a suite of tools to help you create, manage and promote your work.

2. Vimeo

What it is: Vimeo is the artsy cousin of YouTube. Home to many creative-types, Vimeo users usually aim for high-quality content over fails or cat clips.

Features: It comes with the standard suite, plus the ability to create and share videos to groups or channels. There’s also a video school to help you make better videos. A pro account will let you bump up your weekly upload capacity from 500 MB to 5 GB with unlimited HD uploads.

Why Vimeo?: It’s a solid platform if you feel more serious about video as creative outlet or are just looking for a more constructive community (i.e. less trolls, more feedback).

3. Flickr

What it is: Didn’t see this one coming, right? Flickr actually lets you upload videos — just click on the Explore tab. The team still sees photo uploading as its main game, but it is also “gently” building out its video abilities. It calls videos “long photos” and limits their length to just 90 seconds.

Features: Basic users can upload two 90-second videos a month. Pro users have unlimited access. Options are a little sparse at the moment, with basically the same feature set as Flickr’s photo uploads.

Why Flickr?: It may seem restrictive, but users willing to embrace short-form video will have access to Flickr’s massive and active user base. It may not be a great option for your home video collection, but video experiments abound. Flickr’s video space is going to keep growing.

4. Veoh

What it is: On the flip side, Veoh lets you upload enormously long videos. The site, much like a YouTube for long-form videos, actually doesn’t have a size restriction for uploading. It’s become a space for full-length films and short clips alike.

Features: Unlimited upload capacity and a smart UI make it easy and relatively quick to load huge files. While it may not have the same audience as YouTube, the lack of restrictions has attracted some top-quality videos and shows.

Why Veoh?: If you’re feeling hamstrung by size restrictions but still want a quality platform, Veoh is your best bet.

5. Viddler

What it is: Billed as a way to build your brand, Viddler is more geared to companies and corporations than homemade video.

Features: With the business focus comes business tools — Viddler lets users access analytics, customize their video players, distribute to iTunes, place comments within the video and even monetize with Viddler’s adworks tool.

Why Viddler?: If you’re a brand looking to up your video content, Viddler provides a stable starter kit with an array of support features.

6. DailyMotion

What it is: Organized more like a content aggregator, DailyMotion offers videos of varying length organized by category. There’s plenty of user-made videos, but professional, quality clips are more prominently featured.

Features: The site supports the most common video formats but restricts storage capacity to less than 150 MB and less than 20 minutes per video. The emphasis is on community, with the ability to add other users in a contact list and send feedback. Most high-powered features, like HD uploads, are locked behind pro accounts.

Why DailyMotion?: It’s not the most intuitive site for uploaders, but it’s easy for curious viewers to browse. If you can manage the backend, there’s a good chance your video will reach new eyes.

7. yfrog

What it is: Finally, the dark horse. Yfrog is better known as a photo-sharing site for Twitter, but it also has the capacity for video, with a healthy and growing selection.

Features: You can upload short videos and post to Twitter all from one place. You can also see what videos (or photos) your network has posted using the site. There isn’t much of a search function, instead relying on news feed-style postings as your friends upload videos.

Why yfrog?: Don’t care about video hosting? Want a more personal take on online video? Yfrog lets you get your videos up and out through your social network faster than any of the sites above. There may be fewer features, but it’s really about uniting your own social community around video.

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Sunday, May 29, 2011

5 Things You Should Know About Cloud Music Services

Now that both Amazon and Google have launched their cloud music services, we're just waiting for Apple to complete the triumvirate with their imminent launch. In case you're not clear, a cloud music service (sometimes called a "music locker") stores your music on an online server then delivers it to any of your music playback devices. Before you choose a service though, here are a few facts you should know.

1. Why is a cloud music service so cool? Because you won't fill up half your hard drive with only music if it's stored online for one thing. You'll be able to access your music from any device that connects to the Internet, so you're not restricted to only the device that has your music loaded on it.

2. You have to manually upload your music on both Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive. Because both Google and Amazon didn't get permission from the record labels, for right now at least you have to manually upload your entire library if you want access to it. That could take hours and hours depending upon how large the library and the speed of your Internet connection.

3. But you won't need to upload everything on Apple's service. That's the whole key about doing a deal with the record labels; if the service sees that you've already paid for a song or sees the song on your hard drive, it automatically loads a copy into your storage locker without you having to upload it. That means that you're uploading time can theoretically be a few minutes instead of hours and hours.

4. Apple also has a strategic advantage by doing the deals with the labels. If and when Amazon and/or Google decide that they really should have these deals in place, it's going to cost them a lot more to get the deal done. Apple has already set the deal precedent with their label agreements so they won't be getting better for the other two as a result. Any additional costs will get passed on the to consumer, so the Apple service may end up being cheaper than the other two in the long run.

5. Apple's service has another cool feature. Reportedly it pre-caches of a portion of the each song in your library on your player so that as soon as you choose a song, it instantly plays without having to wait to communicate with the cloud first unlike the other services.

The Apple announcement regarding the release of their cloud service is supposed to be any day now, and until that time, we won't have a real head-to-head comparison of services to look at. That said, cloud music is here to stay and it's just a matter of time before it becomes widely adopted.
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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

A Comparison Of Online Music Distributors

Here's an interesting chart that I found (my apologies, but I can't remember where) that provides a nice overview of some of the popular online music distribution services. With all the hoopla over Tunecore recently raising their prices, it's interesting to see that they're really not that out of line when you look at a side by side comparison.

So which one should you choose? Price isn't always the most important element of your decision. Things like free UPC codes and which stores and subscription services they service are also important. Ultimately, the general feel of the distributor and their user interface may have more of an affect on your decision than anything, so make sure you check them all out before making your choice.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Facebook Partners With Spotify For Blockbuster Deal

Forbes Magazine is reporting the Facebook has partnered with Spotify on a music-streaming service that could be launched in as little as two weeks, a deal that could have a huge effect on the music industry.

According to the article, "Clicking on the Spotify icon will install the service on their desktop in the background, and also allow users to play from Spotify’s library of millions of songs through Facebook. The service will include a function that lets Facebook users listen to music simultaneously with their friends over the social network, one of the sources said."

The partnership is a win-win for both services. Facebook gets the music app that it's long wanted, and Spotify gets exposure to a huge audience. Although there's no money changing hands and Spotify won't be seeing any of Facebook's ad revenue, it does give them a chance to upsell their Facebook users to their premium service, which is what they really need to prosper. Spotify is currently a free service but limits users to just 10 hours a month. The premium service is currently 10 pounds in the UK and 10 euros in the rest of Europe.

Want to know the downside? It still won't be available in the US until Spotify finishes up it's license talks with the labels, although that's rumored to be coming soon. When that happens, this deal will be a game-changer.

Read the entire Forbes article.

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

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.
Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Monday, May 23, 2011

A Startling Comparison Of Online Versus Broadcast Radio

Here's a couple of eye-opening charts that were presented at the NARM (National Association of Record Merchants) convention in Los Angeles last week by the research company Nielsen. The data is from a period of January to May 1st of this year. What you see is that online radio has more variety but traditional broadcast radio has way more reach.

These charts make it seem as if Internet radio doesn't stand a chance against broadcast radio, and this may be true in advertising only. Don't forget that it doesn't cover "personal radio" subscription services like Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG, etc. So if you're an artist, there's no question that you have a much better chance of being discovered online.

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Sunday, May 22, 2011

The Serious Ramifications Of The Eminem Lawsuit

As stated in the last couple posts about this subject, the Eminem win in court over Universal Music Group (UMG) would have some serious ramifications on the major labels at some point. It looks that point is now.

To catch you up, Eminem's production company sued UMG over how the royalties were computed for digital music. They suit hinged on whether a download is a treated like a record royalty or license agreement. The difference is that in a record deal, the record label manufacturers the product (CDs) and pays the artist a royalty of anywhere between 12 and 20% of the wholesale price. In a licensing deal, the record label provides the licensee (such as a distributor in another country producing CDs) with a master, and they in turn manufacture the product. The record label and the artist split the proceeds from the license deal 50/50.

Since in the case of digital downloads, a label doesn't actually manufacture anything and provides the user with a master, it sure looks like a license and the court agreed.

UMG originally won the case but lost the appeal, meaning that the court agreed that a download is really a license rather than a sale, awarding FBT (Eminem's production company) the right to collect a lot more money, reportedly as much as $30 million. The irony is that Eminem declined to be part of the lawsuit so as not to make waves with UMG, so he might not see an extra dime.

As predicted, more classic artists are coming forward to sue UMG. First came the estate of Rick James, then last week Rob Zombie, White Zombie, Whitesnake and Dave Mason filed a class-action suit against UMG in the United States District Court in San Francisco.

Supposedly a number of attorneys for other UMG classic acts are preparing lawsuits as well. As predicted, this will change the music industry in that the major labels don't have enough money as it is, and they'll all be in serious trouble if big payouts are necessary. That said, some artists are afraid to engage in a battle with a major label, especially if they depend upon royalties from their catalog. There's enough accounting shenanigans that goes on with labels already, and many artists are wary about giving them an excuse for more.

A suit by artists signed after about 2003 won't happen however, since the labels put language in the all contracts from that time on that clearly specifies that a digital download is a sale.

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Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Help Support This Blog

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

8 Essential Facebook Promotion Tips

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Booking Info Section Of Your Website

Sunday, June 5, 2011

7 Ways To Sell More Merch

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Prince And Gaga Prove The New Music Business Model

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Making "Like" More Likeable

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Radio Promotion Today

Monday, May 30, 2011

7 YouTube Alternatives

2. Vimeo

3. Flickr

4. Veoh

5. Viddler

6. DailyMotion

7. yfrog

Sunday, May 29, 2011

5 Things You Should Know About Cloud Music Services

Thursday, May 26, 2011

A Comparison Of Online Music Distributors

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Facebook Partners With Spotify For Blockbuster Deal

Monday, May 23, 2011

A Startling Comparison Of Online Versus Broadcast Radio

Sunday, May 22, 2011

The Serious Ramifications Of The Eminem Lawsuit

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