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.

The embedding wars continue…and it seems to me that the industry as it scrabbles for money is just shooting itself in the horse when the foot has bolted (did I get that right? ) – it is as Damien from OK GO writes:

we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.

Damien was describing their bands battle over license/country and embed (as in when you copy the code and put videos into your own webpage/profile/blog) restricted videos, realising that this is counter-productive and annoys fans.

Apparently this is all to do with advertising – the Ad revenue isn’t shared for embedded ads (although annoyingly YouTube STILL shows the ads an embedded videos – what IS with that?) as advertisings don’t like the idea of embedded videos possibly ‘hurting’ their brand by being embedded on any old site (say, a porn site or site of a rival or critical party…yes advertisers get with the 21st century, and the fact of mass comment and lack of control, but as we know like with music marketers they don’t have a clue(train) as yet)…

So when you have bands criticising their paymasters (in this case our old friends EMI) or like with Amanda Palmer criticising Warners for pulling her videos (and then created the wonderful song above ‘Please Drop Me’ to the tune of Moon River – asking fans to upload it to YouTube as a response to Warners), then you know something is very wrong in the state of DigiMark.

And I think this is counterproductive – as Damien and Amanda realise such freedom over their videos help build their career – to clamp down on embedding or sharing or streaming or posting low-quality MP3s is actually to stop the massive free-promotional tool that is the internet. It’s far worse when someone doesn’t actually give a shit and want to listen/post/play/embed your videos and music, believe me. To have their attention is a luxury – don’t waste it, or turn it off by silly restrictions – to lose that possibly a lifetime of attention for the sake of a few cents is really to cut your face off to spite your nose (again? did I do that right?) (thanks to chronicpaint for the link)

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…

All this week Rise and Shine are doing live streaming writing a song (and other entertainments) interactively – in 3 hours by which it’s recorded and then put on the site, every night for a week from 7pm.

I could only drop in for the last hour and had distractions but I’m proud that the wonderfully bizarre and topical Magma Lady had a few lyric donations (polar bear and the santa bit) from me – and the lovely Ben Walker (the guy who wrote The Twitter Song – thought I recognised him from somewhere!) used them!

I think it’s a different songwriter/musician each week so it’s going to be fun…definitely tuning in tomorrow, a bit earlier (ironically I was doing a very acidic remix in Renoise, not very musical though and forgot the time!).

Anyway I think this is more what interactive/online TV should be about – live interaction with the audience helping to obtain a goal which is not just writing a song it’s also raising money for charity – btw I think at least half or more of the proceeds of these songs (if they get a hit) will go to charity, and donations on the site.

OK this post has been brewing for a long while – so it’ll be a long one. Deal.

About a month ago I joined Twitter – people were quite surprised, 2 years ago I’d expressed my hatred of Twitter at Podcamp 06 (the audio is floating around somewhere) so me eventually joining Twitter was a surprise.

Why the turnaround? Well one of two things; I feel as part of my job I need to keep abreast of these technologies, and the other that I’d missed hearing about whole conferences because the podcasting community had pretty much decamped wholesale to Twitter, and thus most of the conversations don’t happen outside, or unless you are subscribed to 100s of shifting blogs. Unlike previous times, the only central point was…you guessed it – the ubiquitous Twitter.

So has my attitude changed? Yes and no.

Back in 2006 I decried the fact that Twitter and social media were sucking the life out of real life friendship – there wasn’t really a point to going to see mates to find out how they are when you can read it on a Facebook or Twitter update. I think the social effects of sites like Facebook since 2006 has partly proven me correct, people seem to be using technology to offset traditional contact with friends, and there seems to be a wider base of shallower friends, what I call acquaintances, but under an umbrella of frequent updates so connected as if they are close friends. It’s a sham; a bad reflection of a true friendship. Obviously it’s also a good, keeping people in touch who are the other side of the world and bringing people together, so it’s not all bad. But I find it ironic that through technology I’m more likely to see someone 100s or 1,000s of miles away, but then never see friends down the road in the flesh.

Crazy Half Life

Robert Scoble talked about half-life of a conversation recently; I think in James Gleick fashion it’s useful to try and measure the speed at which these conversations are moving, the stress vectors. It’s obvious that Twitter is a very different animal to Livejournal, despite not that different technology and only about 7 years difference in launchdate, but really in speed they are worlds apart.

Part of the attraction of Twitter is it’s Google-like simplicity, it does one thing, and does it well. Compared to blogging or email, the conversations seem fairly one-sided, like a blog (really most people there are talking about themselves, the amount of PR/marketing and new media evangelists is horrific); but without the depth you can maintain in a blog. The conversations are quicker – gone in 15 minutes or quicker, and very volatile – no not that people get angry but the posts disappear off-screen quickly, and are gone.

So like a more acceptable version of those kids on the bus txting continually, it’s blogging with hyper A.D.D. But this seems to be the way social media is moving – into the realm of fast immediate mobile-friendly short conversations, throwaway, shallow.

And with video – like 12seconds I can see it becoming wham-bam-thank-you-Mr because the time constraints of following 100 or 1,000+ people and the flood of audio and video media means the message has to survive the tl;dw or tl:dl (too long; didn’t watch or too long; didn’t listen) of mobile phones, iPods and online media. Will this affect the message? Of course it will. Or there will be two streams, one of the refuseniks producing niche longer programs, and a massive pool of really short shows with no content.

Living with Numbers

‘Social Gaming’ as I call it, attaining friends for sheer number volume and grooming/attracting/whoring yourself to get people to click that ‘Add friend’ or ‘Follow’ button is not new – Myspace and millions of teenagers have been playing that game for years. But the simplicity of the user interface coupled with the prominence of the Following / Follower stats (thank GODDESS they didn’t make the mistake of calling it “friend’ like Myspace and LJ, what a psychological drama minefield that has been) has led to an almost messianic obsession with collecting followers. It makes the obsessive ‘I wanna be your friend’ popularism from when you were in school seem somehow quaint. At least those teens weren’t pushing a ‘brand’ and a hidden business/marketing plan.

Also interesting is a new breed of people who seem to be trying to create a career being a Social Media Whore – consultants or new media professionals, it’s like the professional bloggers of yore (who interestingly have stormed this Social Media space in the same way traditional broadcasters invaded podcasting, using their ‘name’ status and existing readership and other channels to promote their Twitter/Friendfeed to trounce any ‘competition’) except with one difference – blending the prosaic and mundane with the insights and links of old, all in 140 characters, leading to a sort of silent film / talkie divide between those using all media – video, microblogs, maps, moblog photos, work AND play, and those just pinging their Twitter from their blog when they post.

But is it possible to eat off linklove? Can online respect alone pay the bills? Is it a new way of working (I know of people who have gotten work via Twitter and other social media), or just TwitFactor? Your 15 seconds are up, Mr McLuhan43553.

Top of the Class

Something that has always bothered me about social media – and new / rich media (interesting term there) as a whole is that it’s nerdy. white, usually male and most definitely middle class. I’m sure loads of people will now point to exceptions, but it bothers me that diversity isn’t there – when 2nd and some of the 3rd world can now have access to at least mobile networks there isn’t a desire or a knowledge to blog, vlog, podcast, communicate? Is this a purely leisure class pursuit? Is it because the barriers to entry are too high, these shiny toys are way too expensive, from computers to bandwidth to servers? I do feel personally there aren’t enough different voices, and a lot of existing voices ‘retweeting’ or reposting the same old.

Talking class, it’s interesting that sociologists are studying the online habits of teenagers of differing class strata and/or money / social groups. Danah Boyd is doing some interesting work in this area – Facebook vs Myspace was a contentious one from 2007, I can see similar tribal loyalties affecting who signs up for Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. I wonder if Twitter classes as mid-30s male IT geek in it’s demographic? Certainly to progress past the posts about software ‘mashups’ (grr) and Rails coding it needs to widen it’s appeal – the one sided nature of most conversations and marketing spiel as well will put people off – the ability to track conversations is hard, which as Mr Scoble would say at this point, is why Friendfeed wins in that regard.

Hierarchies in the Clouds

I find it interesting that there is already what is called a Twitterati. but no Facebookati or Bebo Mafia, and it’s already acquired a (jokingly?) negative connoitation. Every bunch of people online creates a clique, but not many have such a visible metric to affirm their status. So you get usually the same old names, with 1,000s of friends, beseiged by their success, so they talk to each other and themselves. Reciprocity failure, the gift that keeps on giving.

Rustle the Brand / Public good?

So the new model that people are building is one of branding yourself (I did say they were in marketing) – but corporate bloggers could tell you tales of drunkeness and cruelty and the problem of openness vs public image. Now multiply this to a whole life, where the personal, prosaic and professional are blended together, where people share drunken tagged photos and videos on YouTube and Facebook (better change your Privacy settings!) with a profile linked to your LinkedIn CV. Now you can develop nicknames and personas, but it does raise interesting issues on what employers expect to know and what employees share (or more interestingly get shared about them), and how those feeds interact and cross-relate. And how it could all go very, very wrong (see the whole Russell Brand debacle for a broadcast version of this).

Is there a public good in social media? Is the act of sharing seen as a public good, or is it just an act of vanity or self promotion? Will people share if it endangers their brand? Or just self-censor so the conversations and connections become banal?

Web 2.0 – Where’s My Money?

Free content isn’t free; someone has to spend time making it, someone has to spend money storing it; someone at YouTube or Twitter has to spend expensive nights awake trying to work out how to make money from it. People have made money from other people’s ‘free’ content though.

I’ll quote Bicyclemark and Richard Bluestein from a Citizen Reporter podcast:

“BicycleMark: But then again sometimes I look at conferences and I think ‘What have we done?’. I’ve seen some very expensive conferences taking place…but you look around and you go ‘Wow look all this money that’s been spent so these people can talk to each other’ and I guess make business deals.

Richard: You know what bothers me…It’s interesting though that the business people that schmoozed and squeezed the money out of VC’s – they are not having any sort of problems paying for their health insurance, they’re still flying first class, you know what I mean..That’s the case pretty much anywhere in Silicon Valley…the people that Twitter everything and talk about the trends and eat constantly…just constantly! They just fucking always have plenty of money…they’re relying, they’re sucking off people like us that produce content…If you have a business based on podcasting or video…or streaming, there wouldn’t be any website if there wasn’t people makiing stuff. Most of the time they aren’t paying anything for that content.”

What the quote displays is the widening digital and social divides is also reflected online – the differences between rich and poor, free creators and paid producers, those with VC money and those with not and different classes. The internet has been seen as the great Communicator, crossing boundaries of race, class and gender, yet people are getting rich reinforcing those differences. Rich media indeed.

And the book publishers (Mr O’Reilly invented the term to sell books remember) and people who created startups and got the sponsorships and VC funds (and even refuse offers from Facebook) are the ones who got rich off the podcast (failed) boom, or the recent online video goldrush. Only the fail whale of the economy will put a pinprick into this small bubble. Maybe Baron von Blubber should sue.

But the ethics of making money off someone else’s content – which might not be owned by them, well I think it’s dubious at best. Funny to hear people moan about 99% of the videos on YouTube not being ‘monetizable’ – what you want people to post videos for free that conveniently fit into your business model and sponsorship deals? Do you want gold-plated hundreds and thousands on that cake or are you gonna eat it as is? No I’m surprised the companies have been very lax in revenue sharing, apart from some laughable contracts – it’s the media that brings people in, support it. Or it dies…oops too late.

Summary

Maybe the economy will change all this – unemployed people become social media professionals, selling their network as much as their skills (why does that sound like some 21st century cyber Austen novel?) and have time to create amazing videos on YouTube. With no house, rent or need for food. And pigs tweet.

I think it’s more likely the freebie time other than kids at school or retired people is over; companies are going to have to attract people to create media for them, especially if it has to be short snappy and sweet. Yeah the conversational tweet/video microblogging will stay; but podcasting and online video are going to have a tougher time. When people are stressed about their rent, they aren’t going to make loads of Mentos videos…unless it’s of protests. Maybe like with the Obama campaign we’ll see a start of mass use of social media as a political tool, if so that does give me hope.