Been thinking about posting an article about Music Marketing 101 for ages, in two minds to post it. For one, marketing and advertising as Hicks said IS the devils work – and I should know I work in this world. Why should I help Satan’s Little Helpers?

The other is that as someone who hasn’t marketed his own music is liable to get people saying ‘but you haven’t been at the coalface’ which I accept. I have though been promoting my own stuff (events, podcast, mashups, talents) online for years and been heavily involved with social media, and have been a rabid music fan since 7 years old.

The reason I am posting is the whining from record labels, industry staff, PR people etc. that music doesn’t sell, traditional formats don’t sell, it’s all going to hell in a handbasket – and this is used as a reason to clamp down on ‘illegal’ practices like sharing and mashups and the like. This pisses me off, as I can see most of ‘em are severely missing a trick with social media and interactive media, and blatantly not doing their job and blaming their ineptitude on others (talking mostly corporates here, although I think indies could also learn a little). So if the Lamb lies down with the Beast and listens to it’s iPod for a while, so be it.

So this is an open letter to the music industry managers and marketers and such bods. Doubt they are listening, and some of it seems obvious but is well worth restating, but anyway here goes:

1. Time of the season

In this age of 24 Hour news and ecommerce, why does it take 3-6 months to release a track or album? OK I know lead times for traditional press and getting a physical product out there are immovable (something like 6 weeks for magazines, and dunno about CDs/vinyl now but guessing 1-2 months or more depending on artwork/specialties), but when you’ve got iTunes and digital releases there’s no reason to create all that buzz for a track you cannot even get or legally download…this feeds Hype Machine and music blogs such delays – as the longer the delay, the more likely the fans will get bored of the track or go find it illegally. Why not have the track/album available digitally immediately? Why tease for months, this is the old way of thinking – we want stuff we can listen/share NOW.

2. Oh so special

‘Physical formats don’t sell’. BULL. SHIT. I’ve bought physical formats recently, special imports I’ve hurried to buy and awaited eagerly for the postie to deliver. Now I admit amongst a younger age group the physical CD holds less sway, but 30+ age bracket still prefers it…and those CDs I bought? Special limited editions – one was a CD of an album I already had on MP3 but with a hand-sprayed 7″ collectable – the handmade part is important. Make your releases special in this age of digital cloned conformity, make them artworks, make them unique, handmade, craft objects. Limited edition and special – totally the way to go. I thought the music industry KNEW this? Seemingly not in most cases. Create a boring physical product that conforms and looks like everyone else’s CDs and guess what? No-one will care much for it. Artists know this (both visual and musical) – listen to them.
And even the MP3s can be made distinct and have thoughtful nice touches – one of the things I loved about NIN’s free Ghosts LP is Trent commissioned a unique graphic for each MP3 of the album from an artist. That is cool.

3. Live n’ direct

Buying direct from the artist gives a warm, fuzzy feeling…there is NO reason why artists can’t sell direct in this age, and it’s a major plus. All fans would rather give their money to the band/artist they love rather than some spotty chimp who just put the CD in a rack and doesn’t really care if it’s The XX or Michael Buble in the box. NIN knows this, St Etienne knows this, Shut Up and Dance knows this, even Radiohead did this once before wimping out. No reason why unestablished acts can’t do it either.

4. Everybody wants a piece of the action

In this Web 2.0/Social media world it amazes me that media companies still tell people to want a passive experience. Or give them a token interaction (no, texting inane comments or competitions or a token remix competition for a record voucher does not cut it anymore). Talking about DJ Hero recently on GYBO reminded me of this – Activision and Freestyle missed a trick there, they could have used their deep pockets to license and involve the DJ/mashup community by licensing existing popular mashups for the game or releasing some of the parts into the wild and including those as downloadable content for the game with credit to the mashers – who of course will be so pleased with the attention they will promo the game for free. Or doing what Frets on Fire is doing and allow people to create their own levels, and share them (even without the tracks if that was a problem, but just instructions for which track/album to use).

The top-down idea of entertainment is so 20th century, and is changing. So do what Lily Allen did and include your album parts on your album (and thus had loads of free advertising in mashups everywhere), make your videos remixable (how I go through hell to find high quality vids for my mashes) or create forums for people to remix your work as NIN has – and then don’t sue/threaten them if they use the work in unexpected ways, because that will happen, but will probably be to everyone’s benefit.

5. Everybody’s free (to feel good)

Free is not evil – free is good. Singles do not sell in the main unless you are Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber or some such crap – so why not give them away for free to promote the album? Or at least don’t snap at the blogs posting MP3s giving you free publicity – they are music fans too and would most likely want to see the album and band/artist do really well – especially if they are actually posting tracks with permission! Also pay what you want seems to work well, like the direct model (or in tandem) people want to see the artist do well – what they hate is the money going up exec’s noses or for people who add very little to the chain – they are not stupid, the excess and waste (and high CD prices) of the industry hasn’t gone unnoticed. Neither has the money thrown at frankly terrible projects and bands that anyone with sense, an ear and not directly related to them would’ve not given the time of day.

Oh and Creative Commons is your friend.

6. Release Me (and Let Me Love Again)

Following from the last point is the hardest part – releasing something good. Now I’m not going to fall into the old fogey trap and say pop music is crap today (it was ever thus, sadly – with some notable and honourable exceptions) but producing music that people care about, rather than something for ringtone or advertising sales, pays dividends. Treat all music as throwaway and guess what: your audience will do likewise. This doesn’t mean serious singer-songwriter bores need to rise apparent but meaning in music has been lost somewhere in between all the branding meetings; lack of risk taking and the one-album syndrome mean artists never develop beyond the surface; concentrating on one niche ADHD demographic will not only lose everyone else, it will probably lose that too because ‘giving people what they want’ only works so far until those people get bored and listless – people don’t KNOW what they want until they hear it. The shock of the new, and all that.

Sticking with what they know and a tried and tested formula is short-sighted and just leads to disinterest and apathy. Try behaving more like a mashup artist – mix up the genres, fuck it up, put the country next to rave next to electro next to death metal and see what happens. Feed stuff to the ‘wrong’ audience and see what happens. I just know people will love and buy music that moves them, you just have to surprise, shock, woo, involve and connect with them, resonate with them. I think a lot of that is to break down the walls between artist and audience – Twitter is already doing this in it’s inane way – and take out the marketing bumpf and production fluff, which adds nothing.

I hope these comments come of use to provoke a few thoughts…it does seem from the outside the creativity and innovation in promoting bands is lacking – especially in the realm of social media, bar a few key people who indeed ‘get it’. A lot of this is corporates acting as corporates do – and still not heeding Cluetrain Manifesto that came out over 10 years ago – the principles of transparency and letting people get direct access to those people they need to talk to and not letting bland marketing smokescreens get in the way are still not there.

Fuck you Simon Cowell I won’t do what you tell me! Yes I’ve bought my copy of ‘Killing in the Name Of’ by Rage Against the Machine in protest of X-Factor nonsense and the ‘guaranteed’ Xmas #1 – I want my Xmas #1 back, Teletubbies and Bob the Builder and Blobby and all…and so should you (if you’re in the UK). If you buy it now before Saturday 19th December at 23:59pm you’ll contribute to the Xmas chart…yeah I know this is silly but anything that reduces Simon Cowell’s inane grin (he thinks this is stupid btw) is got to be good.

And X-Factor REALLY has destroyed music in this country…even the insane wonderful silly outsider novelty songs don’t even try now despite the going being the best in years with downloads and social media – cos of the X-Factor behemoth sitting on top of the charts with it’s trousers way too high. X-Factor is evil, simple as.

I’d avoid some of the download services unless you know 100% that they contribute to the charts – I know 7Digital, iTunes and HMV definitely do – the others not so sure.

Of course all the hipsters and pedants will piss and moan and not put their money where their mouth is and call it silly…well then don’t moan when Joe or whoever won it sings that dreadful Miley Cyrus ballad all over your Xmas telly…

EDIT! 18 videos in under 7 minutes from Tim Baker on Vimeo.

Ian Fondue’s legendary mashup gets a video from Instamatic (ie, me!) 18 videos in 7 minutes, in a tribute to those 80′s edit videos, Max Headroom and the like…it’s got blipverts and internal references/in jokes in it, a la Alan Moore. Blink and you’ll miss them!

Tried also to show that most videos are essentially the same, and what may seem random is in fact rather ordered.

Big thanks goes to Ian Fondue for such a great mashup – a staple of my sets, my Mashup of the Year (2008?) and long-deserving a decent video. I hope y’all enjoy.

Features:

Bodyrox ft Luciana – Yeah Yeah
Obie Trice – Got Some Teeth
Dr Dre – Forgot About Dre
No Doubt – Hella Good
Justin Timberlake – Sexy Back
D12 – Purple Pills
Lady Sovereign – Love Me or Hate Me
Missy Eliott – Work It
Black Eye Peas – My Humps
Dizzee Rascal – Stand up Tall
KRS1 – Sound of the Police
Reel2Reel – I like to Move It
Kylie – Slow
Kelis – Milkshake
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five -  The Message
Madison Avenue – Don’t Call me Baby
Diana Ross – Upside Down
J-kwon – Tipsy

And a few other stealth bits

Now also at other good outlets: YouTube (who is on Ultra Records? It got Content ID’d by them, thankfully still there although blocked in some countries, grr) and Myspace so there is NO excuse if you are Vimeo-phobic.

You can also download an iPod-friendly file here or it’s in the feed so if you’re subscribed you might have it already. (It’s a .m4v file, which is basically a .mp4 that Apple strangely decided to invent it’s own suffix for – beats me. If you have probs try Quicktime/iTunes or renaming the suffix to .mp4 and playing in a far better player such as VLC).

It’s not often you hear a mashup and go THAT’S A CLASSIC about 30 seconds in, but with Mr Earworm‘s Finest that’s not an unknown reaction, providing my favourite mashup OF ALL TIME with ‘Stairway to Bootleg Heaven’, and his new track follows that illustrious history – a mix of Reckoner by Radiohead and Kanye’s ‘Love Lockdown’, called funnily enough Reckoner Lockdown.

As it’s a mashup it sadly wouldn’t qualify for the remix competition for Reckoner Radiohead are currently holding, providing the ‘stems’ for everyone on iTunes (sadly not for free like Trent Reznor does, but hey it’s a step in the right direction, at least they are not charging for each ‘stem’ – a stem is a part of a mix, drums, guitar, vocals, etc) – interesting who has submitted mixes, Akala, Amplive, Them Jeans, Diplo and James Holden are taking part – but my favourite so far is the remix by team9 – it has the same sort of feel as his remixes of AC/DC, except mellower like an electronic shoegaze or the likes of Supermayer or Simian Mobile Disco at their most laid back (hopefully this will work in my blog too).

Please help one of the scene’s best bootleggers and remixers by voting for it below! Voting ends 23rd of October I think.

One thing that irks me about Apple (only one thing? everyone cries, well the ones reading my blogs anyways!) is that they like to be portrayed as the victim, the lone tiny company against a world of big blue corporates. Especially when journalists cover news stories about Apple.

Well I have news for you – Apple is a large corporate, iPod one of the world’s biggest products, and iTunes is probably the biggest music store in the world – selling billions of tracks a year. So I when I hear the news that poor Apple can’t continue the iTunes Store for want of a dime – well 6 cents – I call BULLSHIT on that. But it’s interesting that quite a lot of the media and blogosphere has followed the David vs Goliath on this, but sadly the wrong Goliath.

What I can gather is that unlike how it’s being presented, Apple is playing it’s strong-arm tactics again – those with long memories will remember that for many months after the launch of iTunes Uk/Europe top seling acts such as White Stripes and Prodigy were not on iTunes. This is because Beggars Group, which XL Records is a part, couldn’t come to an agreement with Apple, with Apple paying the indie group less than the Big 4 major record companies in iTunes in the US….now being the world’s biggest go-to online store wields a lot of clout; and surprise surprise again comes out the petulant child in Apple wanting to take away their toys.

What actually is happening? Well no it’s not big industry fat-cats, it’s not greedy record companies, it’s the royalty collecting agency National Music Publishers Agency (kind of like the RIAA of publishers, but I think less evil unless you had a guitar tab site, then they are) wanting to increase the online royalty payments for it’s members – the members are publishing agencies. Now explaining the arcane publishing system for a Sun reader is not easy, or even you, the more intelligent Radio Clash reader, but I’ll try.

When a track is written and released it has mechanical copyrights (rights) – ie. the right to create CDs/vinyl etc – and publishing rights – the right to literally print the score of the work, if the act/artist has a publishing deal (most do, it’s like Music 101 before even getting a record deal). The publishing rights are important because through ‘publishing’ a work then other artists can cover it, and the songwriter can earn royalties such as those from covers, sale of tracks and sale of sheet music – which tends to be an important and steady source of income for most groups or artists, if they write their own material. So publishing companies sort out the legal stuff and the reclaimation of those royalties, when a track is sold.

So what’s happening here is the NMPA is asking for more money, now when iTunes Music Store started they worked out a deal based on the 1997 deal for CDs (11 years ago!) and it not being a big industry then, everyone complied…now iTunes MS is so massive, it’s probably fair that the songwriters should get the same for selling a CD than selling online, which both are being renegotiated now (and probably brought in line with each other).

So rather than ‘Apple gets shafted by EVIL RECORD COMPANIES!’ it’s actually more like ‘Apple refuses to give songwriters (you know, the ones that create the songs you listen to?) more money’. And we are talking an increase from 9 cents to 15 cents here – tbh if Apple’s profit margin is only 6 cents a track as the retailer, then I’d be very worried for Apple as a business (typically a physical record store takes 50% or more of the price of a CD, so I doubt Apple is taking less than that – with less physical overheads (shops, stores, staff) -EDIT: actually apparently Apple takes 29 cents per track – a third – with 61 cents being the record company according to the Guardian article linked above…)

So who then is being greedy here?

It sure as hell isn’t the songwriters, I mean if they were attacking the record companies I’d say be my guest, but publishers and songwriters seems a really small (but probably more bullyable) target.

Maybe the ‘Brick’ is to throw through the windows of the NMPA?

UPDATE: Sadly the Copyright Judges caved and backed down. it’s not usual I’m for ‘industry’ getting more money, but if it’s the songwriters benefiting and not some A&R wanker, or record company exec, then hell yeah. They write the music I love.