Zappa's "Roxy By Proxy" Promotion

I love Frank Zappa and spent a fair amount of time with him when he was alive (check out my Black Page and Waldorf Astoria stories if you're interested). Frank's family has been valiantly trying to keep his name alive since his passing, and son Dweezil has done a great job evangelizing his music with his Zappa Plays Zappa tours. Then came the Roxy By Proxy promotion.

The Zappa Project/Object of your Dreams: Roxy By Proxy! is the Zappa Family Trust's effort to raise at least a million dollars to fund the making of a film of Frank's 1973 performance at The Roxy in Hollywood. In order to do that, they're offering 1000 fans the right to become official "CD distributors." That means you pay a license fee of $1,000, receive a duplication master, and then have the right to manufacture and sell as many CDs as you wish, although you still have to pay a royalty of $1.20 on each one that you sell.

I love the idea of thinking outside the box here, and this is almost a clever way to do it, but the whole idea of being a "distributor" just doesn't cut it, in my opinion. First of all, if you "the distributor" expect to make money when you're competing with 999 other distributors, sorry, but it's never going to happen. I'm sure that Zappa fans still purchase CDs, but there's just not enough of them of them out there, especially when your competition is undercutting your price just so they can make their investment back.

What would have been better is if the Trust just came clean and said, "We're trying to raise money to fund a film that we know you want to see. Contribute and we'll send you an exclusive CD, and we'll even give you the right to give to your friends if you want." At least that feels a little more based in reality. After all, we see this same approach hundreds of times a day on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In fact, if they would've gone more towards the crowdfunding route, they might have added a few more tiers where they could've actually surpassed the amount they're looking for.

I understand that the Trust feels that they don't need to go to a crowdfunding site and pay them their cut since they already have a rabid fan base that they can readily access, but this whole issue of leading a potential donator into thinking that they might be able to duplicate and sell some CDs and make their money back is probably misplaced.

That said, I sincerely hope that they raise the funding to get the movie made. Can't wait to see it myself.

What do you think?

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Social Media Tips From The Roxy In Hollywood

The Roxy Theater on Hollywood's famed Sunset Strip has long been a prime venue for acts of all sizes and genres, regardless of their level of success. But like so many other venues, it met with some challenges during the tough years of the financial crisis. Owner Nic Adler decided to turn to social networking to breathe some new live into the club, and did so with resounding success.

Lydia Dishma interviewed Nic Adler for Fast Company and he revealed his tips for using social media. I found this part of the interview on the ever excellent Hypebot blog.

(1) Be Early To Be Influential

"It is this land grab that's happening. If you are on early you can move your base. By the time it becomes an awesome network to be on, you are already at 20K followers."

(2) Keep Moving

"If you miss a beat they've passed you by, so be everywhere. That is why we find ourselves in so many different networks. If we were just on Myspace we'd only be talking to a small group. If we spread out we have a better opportunity to reach more people."

(3) Forget Search. Discover

"I go on Pinterest without anything in mind, I'm just looking and discovering in this different mode...So say you are a business and you have this idea to find the best 20 beers, so you ask your fans. Then you build a new board of your followers' favorite beers and turn around and tweet that out. Your fans are then going to a place where all their ideas are visually placed with links."

(4) Be Generous

"It's about watching that feed and seeing someone tweet, 'Hey I'm broke but I wish I could go to that show,' and I'll turn around and say, 'Hey you are on the list plus one.'...It's better than a contest. It's not something we do every day but the response is amazing."

(5) Be Authentic

"Being authentic and organic are the two biggest things we talk about at The Roxy. It's about a slow build and being honest, and if we are wrong we are honest about that, too. When we are wrong and we make it right, those are almost the most important marketing moments we have at The Roxy."

(6) Change The Way You Think About ROI

"For us, Facebook is more about communication and awareness than trying to get people in the door. People use Facebook as this tool for selling, but more of our content is about music, food, TV...More than 50% of fans might not ever come to The Roxy but we all have this interest in music and pop culture in common."

As with all social media promotion, what works for The Roxy might not work for you, but then again it just might. Especially take note of #6. Too many times we try to measure our promotion by the amount of sales, but sometimes it's more about communication to your fanbase that's important.

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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 discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.