Setting Album Launch Milestones

Recently on Music Think Tank Cyber PR maven Ariel Hyatt wrote a great article about marketing tactics for a new album launch. I'd like to reprint just a part of that post; the section that deals with launch milestones.

"Plan some milestones starting from two months before the release date to at least one month after the album comes out. Here is how this could look: 

Two Months Before Release - Release a single, a great way to get the fans excited and also to get some current press quotes to include when contacting press about the full length album - Announce to your fans that tickets are for sale for the CD release show 

One Month Before Release - Press campaign begins for new album - Announce pre-sale campaign through your newsletter, and social networks including Facebook and Twitter - Set up a Facebook invite for the new release, send it to all your Facebook friends and post on your Fan Page 

Two Weeks Before Release - Keep the excitement going, hold a contest to win a copy of the new album or tickets to CD release show 

Release Day Activities - Write a news post about the release on your official website - Send out a Newsletter to mailing list - Update Twitter and Facebook with an “album out now” post and link to where they can purchase it. 

One Month After The Release - Service press with official music video and announce tour dates. Again, the more activities you can plan leading up to the release will help build the excitement with your fans, and the more press points you can arrange for after a release will enable you to keep contacting press with new content, while at the same time reminding them about the new album. Also, don’t forget to ask your family, friends, and fans to write reviews of your new album on iTunes and other digital retailers the minute it becomes available. Studies have shown that albums that are reviewed at iTunes actually sell more than albums with little to no reviews posted. In the next and final post, I will talk about supplying content while you’re in between album cycles, as a means to stay relevant and fresh with your current fans, and to increase your fanbase as well."

This is some great advice. Unless you formulate definitive milestones, you have no idea if your plan is working or not. Plus, it's a lot easier to achieve your various goals if they're broken into achievable parts. If you have an album that you're finishing, it's never too early to make a plan for it.

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The Secret To Tour Routing

Martin Atkins has toured for years as a member of Public Image Ltd, Killing Joke and many others. He has a great site especially dedicated to helping bands tour called Toursmart.com that has a variety of tips and tricks to help that tour go a lot easier while keeping your expenses low.

In the following video, Martin goes into detail about the value of tour routing, and how it can make or break a tour.

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Music Sales Directly After The Show

Let's say you just played a great show that beats all of the studio tracks that you've recorded. Your fans would be eager to purchase the music right there on the spot if it were available. It's the perfect impulse purchase. The problem is that while it's easy to record the show, making it immediately available isn't that easy. Until now.

Migratory Music has a new system called the Ovation Tower that does just that. Now your fan can purchase a recording of the show and download it as an MP3 to their favorite MP3 player, or have a download link sent to them by email. The kiosks are also capable of selling recorded music from your catalog as well as present advertising.

No word on any of the details on how it's done, how much time it takes, or what the cost might be (except for the fact that they're aiming for "less than $20" to the end user).

I can see a venue installing this and then taking a piece of the sales from the bands. That sounds easier than it is, since we get into the whole legal area of publishing rights, but that hurdle is easy to overcome if there's a new revenue stream coming on the scene.

Check out this short video on the system. I'll post more details as I discover them.

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The 8 Principles Of Fan Communication

Here's a repost from way back when I started this blog about 3 years ago. It's still just as relevant today.

Staying in touch with your fans is probably about the most important thing an artist can do these days, but the way it's done is equally as important. In an excerpt from the Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook, here are 8 principles of fan communication.

1 - Talk to your fans, not at them. Don’t try to sell them, but keep them informed. Anything that reads like ad copy might be counterproductive. Always treat them with respect and never talk down to them.

2 - Engage in communication. Communication is a two-way street. Fans want to know that they’re being listened to. You don’t have to answer every email, but you have to acknowledge that you heard it. The more questions you ask, polls you supply and advice you seek, the more the fan feels connected to you.

3 - Keep your promises. If you say you’re going to do something, do it in a timely fashion. Don’t let the fans wait. If you promise you’re going to email a link and post a song, sooner is always better.

4 - Stay engaged. Even if you’re only sending something simple like a link, take the time to engage the fan. Tell her about upcoming gigs, events or releases. Take a poll. Ask for advice. This is a great opportunity for communication, so take advantage of it.

5 - Utilize pre-orders. If you have a a release coming soon, take pre-orders as soon as you announce it, even it’s free. It’s best to get people to act while the interest is high, plus it gives the fan something to look forward to. To motivate the fan for a pre-order, it sometimes helps to include exclusive content or merchandise.

6 - Appearance means a lot. Style counts when talking to fans. Make sure everything looks good and is readable. Spelling or grammar mistakes reflect badly on you. Try to keep it simple but stylish, but it you or your team don’t have the design chops to make it look good, it’s better to just keep it simple and readable.

7 - Cater to uber fans. All of the members of your tribe are passionate, but some are more passionate than others. Fans have different needs and wants and it’s to everyone’s benefit if you can cater to them all. Try to always include a premium or deluxe tier for every offering such as a free T-shirt or backstage pass as a reward for posting, a free ticket to an upcoming show, signed artwork, extra songs, anything to satiate the uber fan’s interest.

8 - Give them a choice. Give fans numerous ways to opt-in since not everyone wants to receive their information, or the type of information, the same way. Ask if they would rather receive info by email, SMS or even snail mail. Ask if they’d like to receive info on upcoming shows, song releases, video content, or contests. And ask how often they’d like be contacted.

Follow these 8 principles and your communication with your fans will remain both smooth and profitable.

To read more from the Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook or my other books, go to my website.

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Crowdfunding Tours With Gigfunder

Crowdfunding is quite the buzz word these days and rightfully so. Both new and established artists are using it to gain funding for new recording projects using a variety of sites like Kickstarter, Crowdfunder, Sellaband, Rockethub, and many many more.

But one new crowdfunding site recently launched that's very unique. Gigfunder is like those other sites in that it helps raise money from fans, but it's dedicated strictly to funding tour dates.

Let's face it. Touring is not easy or cheap, especially if you're just starting out. You not only have to pay for gas, but hotel rooms, food, transportation and even festival buy-ons. A new band, no matter how good they might be, are at an immediate disadvantage money-wise. Gigfunder not only mitigates some, but adds a few extra incentives too.

First of all, it's a way to publicize your tour and where you're playing in a targeted way. That's because fans suggest cities and venues for you to play. If you don't reach the funding tier, you don't play there, which is the second great thing about the service. No use playing to an empty club. If a gig is funded by your fans, you can be sure they'll be there.

You can find out more about Gigfunder by checking out this FAQ.

Touring is the key to a band's success. Don't let expenses get in the way.

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LimeWire Owes The Major Labels 75 Trillion

When the file-sharing service LimeWire was shut down for copyright infringement in 2010, you would have thought that the RIAA got exactly what it wanted. After all, shutting down a major source of digital music piracy should be considered a victory in a war where the RIAA has had few.

But no, that wasn't enough. Now the RIAA and 13 of the record labels that it represents are sueing LimeWire for the grand amount of $75 trillion. That's right, "trillion" with a T. That's 75,000 billion and 75,000,000 million, if you're counting.

The RIAA determined this absurd figure by identifying just 11,000 songs they felt were infringed. Figuring that each one was illegally downloaded thousands of times at the maximum damage award rate of $150,000 per download, they came up with the magic number.

Let's put the $75 trillion into perspective. The US economy is around $14 trillion per year, and the entire world's economy is around $60 trillion a year. That means that the entire world economy couldn't pay the maximum damages the RIAA thinks it should receive!

Now the judge isn't swayed by the RIAA's claim and will most certainly rule that each infringed song is worth just a single award regardless of the number of illegal downloads, but that would mean that the final number would still be in the billion dollar range.

What are the chances that the RIAA picks up that billion (let alone $75 trillion)? Probably zero.

All of these numbers are posturing for headlines. By throwing out absurd numbers like $75 trillion, the RIAA gets people like me to write about them (you're welcome, guys). It increases the chances of a larger settlement, since almost anything less than a trillion sounds like a victory. It makes the attorney's look good.

Does it help the music business as a whole? Does it move music along it's path of evolution? Does it help the music fan? Does it help the artist or band? The answer to all is "no." Whatever judgement is awarded will go directly to the bottom line of the labels with a hefty sum off the top to the attorneys. The artists will be lucky to see pennies on the dollar.

That's the remnants of the Music 2.0 music economy at work. Long live Music 3.0, where the artist takes control. May it happen ever more quickly.

You can read more about the case on law.com.

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The Secret Meeting That Changed HipHop

Here's a pretty fantastic story that I'm not sure is true, but it sure is interesting, especially if you believe in conspiracies. It's based on an anonymous post on the HipHopIsRead.com blog where the poster states that he was formerly a high-level major record label exec who was invited to a mysterious private meeting in 1991 along with 25 or so other execs from the music business.

During the meeting the execs were urged to change their signing emphasis to acts that promoted criminal behavior and activity (Gangsta rap). The reason? The owners of the record companies had silently invested in private prisons, and it was good business to keep those prisons filled!

Here's a sample of the post.

"At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn’t the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. It was also made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded, we’d be able to buy shares. Most of us were taken back by this. Again, a couple of people asked what this had to do with us.  

At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice. 

He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employees, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons. Immediately, silence came over the room.

You could have heard a pin drop. I remember looking around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and saw half of the people with dropped jaws. My daze was interrupted when someone shouted, “Is this a f****** joke?” At this point things became chaotic. Two of the men who were part of the “unfamiliar” group grabbed the man who shouted out and attempted to remove him from the house. A few of us, myself included, tried to intervene. One of them pulled out a gun and we all backed off. They separated us from the crowd and all four of us were escorted outside. 

My industry colleague who had opened the meeting earlier hurried out to meet us and reminded us that we had signed agreement and would suffer the consequences of speaking about this publicly or even with those who attended the meeting. I asked him why he was involved with something this corrupt and he replied that it was bigger than the music business and nothing we’d want to challenge without risking consequences. 

We all protested and as he walked back into the house I remember word for word the last thing he said, “It’s out of my hands now. Remember you signed an agreement.” He then closed the door behind him. The men rushed us to our cars and actually watched until we drove off."

I didn't know what private prisons were either but I did a little research and found out that it is indeed a huge business. Used by 30 states, one company (Corrections Corporations of America) is attempting to corner the market in 48 states as long as the states will guarantee them the prisons will remain 90% full! In fact, private prisons in 2009 housed 17 times more inmates than they did in 1989.

So I must admit I don't know what to believe. If it's true, it's a said indictment of our business and culture. If it's not, it still goes to show what a huge business prisons have become at the expense of our youth. Either way, we can't win.

Read the entire article here.

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String Cheese Incident Takes On Ticketmaster

We all hate paying convenience charges when buying concert tickets. It's hard not to feel ripped off when you're suddenly asked to pay as much as a 50% premium on the face value of your ticket. There is sometimes a way around that though; buy your tickets at the box office where sometimes those fees are waved, instead of from Ticketmaster.

That's what the jam band String Cheese Incident did recently at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in order to supply their fans with the cheapest tickets possible. The band gave 50 friends about $20k in cash to each buy 8 tickets apiece (the maximum number allowed). The band then advertised those tickets online and sold them to fans for only the face value and the cost of shipping.

The fact of the matter is that most bands already get about 8% of the tickets that they can sell at face value or give away, but SCI wanted more and was refused, so they responded with a grass roots workaround.

But here's the thing about convenience charges, as Bob Lefsetz laid out so well in his newsletter (he's a skeptic of the situation, by the way); that's how both the venues and the promoters stay in business. With acts demanding 90+% of the gate, there's not much money left, and sometimes the superstar acts even demand some of those convenience charges as well.

While SCI could have just lowered it's guarantee in exchange for more face-value tickets, that's not the way the business is built these days. It would take the power of a Live Nation to change the current pricing policies, but we all know how unlikely that's going to happen. In the meantime, it's at least nice to see a band think about their fans a little.

You can read more about this in a New York Times article, and on the Lefsetz newsletter.

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Musicians Income From Branding

One of the basic tenets of Music 3.0 is that your music is your marketing, which means that you shouldn't be afraid to give it away as long as it raises your visibility and establishes your brand. Where music artists have always made the bulk of their money is from gigging and selling merchandise, and the actual music sales of an established artist is as little as 2%.

But it's easy to paint a pie-in-the-sky picture of how these revenue streams work, and I've been as guilty of this as anyone. The fact of the matter is, in order to make any of the current Music 3.0 principles work, you first need an audience. Now I cover how to establish, nurture and sustain that audience in the Music 3.0 guidebook, but it's really easy to overlook the fact that people really have to like your music, and you still have to put in a lot of work to make things happen. In other words, it's pretty difficult if a lot of people think you're mediocre; it's less difficult if a lot of people think you're great.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I firmly believe that almost any artist can find an audience out there if you search long enough. The problem is, it might not be large enough to sustain a career.

So let's assume that you've had at least some minimal success and developed a core audience (however large or small). How much revenue can you expect from your brand? Here's a great slideshow that the Future of Music Coalition did for their MIDEM 2012 presentation that represents a survey of 5000 musicians asked just that question.

View more presentations from midem

One of the major points that the slideshow makes is that you can't expect to make any money as a musician unless you establish your brand first, and even then you still might not make that much if you don't work it hard. Most musicians either don't know how or don't care about the brand part of their careers. If they're lucky, they latch on to an established brand (like a successful band) and ride its coattails. But if you're really interested in a long-term career, your personal brand is of utmost importance. Do it now!

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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.

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Covers Make Up Music Services Catalogs

These days every music service from iTunes to Spotify is trying to one up each other with a power number - the number of songs in their catalog. iTunes now claims to be up to 20 million songs, Spotify 15 million, Amazon MP3 16 million, and on and on. But as music industry consultant Mark Mulligan cites in a recent blog post (The Long Tail Eats Itself), these numbers are incredibly inflated.

It turns out that most of the songs are merely covers of popular songs. Lady Gaga, U2, Coldplay? On average about 10% of their songs are really the artist's version, the rest being covers, parodies, and duplicate cuts from remastered albums, EPs, and greatest hit compilations = filler, if you will. Many of the covers are meant to sound identical to the originals, while many are truly other artist's interpretations of the songs (which is cool), but most people just want to hear the original track.

Here are some other figures that might make you think a bit differently about the breadth of a catalog (these figures are a bit old, bit you'll get the picture):

• eMusic claims that only 75% of their tracks have never been downloaded at least once. That's 25% that have never been downloaded, and who knows how many have only been downloaded only once.

• Nielsen determined that just 1% of all tracks make up 80% of the sales.

What all this means is that even though you may have access to 20 million tracks, that doesn't mean that you'll want to hear them all. In fact, it probably means you'll only want to hear less than 1% of them. Still, that's probably more than you'll ever hear in your lifetime, but too much choice just means complexity of finding what you really want.

It would be great if there was some metadata attached to the song that could sort this mess out, i.e. "original version," "cover," "greatest hits package," etc. Don't hold your breath on that one.

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Will The Major Labels Jump On EDM?

Electronic Dance Music (or EDM) has grown to maybe the biggest underground musical movement ever with virtually zero publicity. When a DJ can play before 50,000 people (and do so regularly), that's definitely a music trend in the making. It's even more interesting when the rest of the world doesn't take notice.


By all indications that's changing though, as EDM has gradually come out from the underground with Grammy show appearances and top 10 hits by David Guetta and Deadmau5. The rest of the world is now aware of what a force in music EDM has become, which means the end of the innocence is soon at hand.

We hear through the LA music grapevine that the major labels are getting ready for an EDM feeding frenzy, beginning at the first annual EDM Biz Conference in Las Vegas on June 5 through 7. Yes, you can be sure that what was once a pure scene will soon be corrupted with Guetta, Paul Van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold wanna-be's and soundalikes signing first, then an influx of pretty boy DJs who look better on camera than the groundbreakers. In fact, don't be surprised if we even see a "producer for the producer" scenario arise as the new superstar celeb DJs are a lot better looking than they are at creating.

Why am I so cynical? Because we've been down this road before over and over, all the way back to the big band crooners, to the beginning of rock n roll, to the British Invasion, to grunge, to hip hop. Every time a trend arises, the majors jump on trying to cash in, then proceed to burn it out. There's no reason to believe that history won't repeat itself again. Enjoy it while it lasts.

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

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10 Tips For Posting On Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook Post Targeting Example

Let's face it, you have a Facebook fan page for one reason - to connect with your fans. While I don't believe that there's a one-size-fits-all formula for how this is done, there are some suggestions on how to get not only the best fan engagement, but also to improve your "Edgerank."

What is Edgerank? It's a news feed formula that Facebook has created to determine which stories are the most relevant. The more popular the story, the more likely it will show up on people's news feed. What that means is you have to optimize your content in order to make sure that it will have a high relevancy, and as a result be seen by more people. It's sort of like organic SEO, but just for Facebook.

Here are 10 tips optimizing your Facebook content.

1. Don't Automate Your Status Updates. Automated content sometimes doesn't make it into users news feeds, and the same message across all social networks can result in a lower fan engagement (I'm guilty of this myself).

2. Show That Your Human. How? Thank you fans for their replies, and post things that are more personal occasionally.

3. Post More Photos And Videos. Photos and videos perform well on Facebook and are favorites of the news feed algorithm, but they also grab people's attention a lot more than text.

4. Put Your Fans In Charge Occasionally. Ask your fans questions. Let them decide which song will be the next single, or which video they like best, or the album cover artwork. They like to be involved and the news feed algorithm likes it as well.

5. Target Your Status Updates. If you have fans all over the world, most don't need to know about a local or regional gig or release. Target the appropriate posts as tightly as you can to the area necessary to get the word out (check out the post targeting example on the left).

6. Ask Questions. Posts that include a call to action get much better engagement than those that don't.

7. Watch You Post Frequency And Timing. Don't overwhelm you fans with too many posts. One or two a day seem to be the best frequency. I've written a lot about timing your posts in the past, and all studies prove that it's important.

8. Have A Consistent Voice. It's important that the voice remains relatively the same in all posts so the fans don't get confused and concentrate on the voice more than the message.

9. Diversify Your Content. A combination of how-to's, artist or band trivia, breaking news, polls, fill-in-the-blanks, photos and videos, or third party content keeps it interesting.

10. Track The Performance Of Your Posts. Watch for trends and feedback/comments from your fans and adjust your posts as needed.

Just to be clear, the tips in this post are from an article by Ekatrina Walter of Intel's Social Media Center for Excellence. I've modified it a bit for the music space, but the points are still hers.

I know that your thinking that this is yet one more thing to consider when posting, but if you're doing it right, it shouldn't take much extra time. Just keep the 10 tips in the forefront of your mind when composing your Facebook post, and the rest should take care of itself.

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

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