The New Rules of Internet Music Marketing (continued)

Continuing from last week’s article;

Get into the discovery zone

Consumers today don’t respond very well to being “marketing to” in the traditional ways. However, they are more passionate than ever about discovering new music. It’s just that now they prefer to discover it on their own or through the recommendation of a friend or trusted blogger, podcaster, music magazine, etc.

As an indie artist, what should you do in this environment?

You should still understand who your ideal fan is and actively seek them out. Simultaneously, you need to put yourself in the best position to be “discovered” – not by a record label A&R rep, but by a curious music fan in search of his or her new favourite song or artist.

Lesson: The best way to promote yourself online in today’s environment is to think outside the box of your own personal website. Yes, you want to use you own domain name as a home base that you steer potential fans and customers to. In addition, it’s vitally important that you leave traces of yourself all over the internet.

That’s why you need to establish a small presence in all the places where your ideal fans congregate online. Get up on Facebook and YouTube. Publish a blog and a podcast and video content. Post your own online press releases that get picked up by music news site feeds.

In short, give people an easy way to find you online and a reason to talk about you once they do.

Why fans need filters

In the old scarcity economy model, the music that got stocked in stores, played on the air, and covered in the press was determined by what Chris Anderson calls “pre-filters.” They include record label executives, retail store buyers, program directors, editors, etc.

Actually, these pre-filters are still very much a force to this day but, as I’ll show in a moment, their power is dwindling. So it’s this small elite group that decides what is worthy of entering the corporate pipeline. Their decisions are made in two ways:

1) They stock, broadcast and cover more of what has already proven itself popular, giving the general public more of what it seems to want.

2) Of the new artists and CDs that comes out every month, the pre-filters predict what they think will be popular (in addition to giving prime retail placement to labels and distributors that pay for it).

Again, this system led to the black and white “hit or miss” mentality of the past several decades. The good news is that the internet and digital technologies have created an abundance economy where everything and everybody have equal access to the marketplace online. The only problem is, the online marketplace is flooded with products and noise of all kinds. It would be easy for consumers to become overwhelmed and confused by all the choices.

That’s where “post-filters” come in. Music fans don’t have to wade through everything to find the gems. They simply use some new tools and trusted sources to help them sort through it all.

Here are just some of the post-filters that fans use today to find new music:

- Friends – personal recommendations from familiar people will always be the leading way that consumers discover new music, books, films and more.

- Customer reviews – being able to read what other people think of a given CD on Amazon or CD Baby influences a lot of purchase decisions.

- Popularity lists – they come in all shapes and sizes: most downloaded, top sellers, highest rated, most discussed.

- Blogs and podcasts – the new niche tastemakers are bloggers and podcasters who cater to narrow audiences.

- Genre-specific resource – from AllHipHop.com to Rockability Radio, people gather where their main interests are addressed.

- Search – when in doubt, fans “Google” their favourite genres and see what comes up.

Your job as a music marketer is to tap into these sources. To make the best use of post-filters, do the following things:

- Encourage your current fans to share your music with their friends – and make it easy to do so.

- When a fan sends you a glowing email about your new CD, ask them to post their comments as a review on Amazon, CD Baby and more – and give them links where they can do that.

- Ask all of your fans to go to a certain site on the same day and vote you to the top of one of the popularity charts.

- Search for the terms your fans use to find music like yours – then try to gain exposure through the top sites you find.

Practice open-source promotion

Another offshoot of this evolution is the blurring of the lines between people who produce creative content and those who consume it. Case in point: A couple of years ago the Beastie Boys gave digital camcorders to 50 fans at a show in New York City and asked them to record everything they saw. Band member Adam Yauch then combined his favourite bits from the 100-plus hours of footage into a feature film.

Other examples:

- Janet Jackson solicited artwork from her fans and incorporated some of the best ideas into her new CD cover.

- Barenaked Ladies (who did not renew a contract with Warner Music Group and are now independent) made the ProTools tracks to 29 of their songs available to fans who wanted to do their own remixes for them.

That’s in stark contrast to the old major-label habit of protecting copyrights at all costs. These days, the smartest musicians, managers and indie labels are redefining what intellectual property and promotion are.

In this new era, artists aren’t the only ones who do the creating while fans passively sit by and wait to be fed the latest music. Now everyone has an opportunity to express themselves. Use this to your advantage. Co-create with your fans. Ask them to help you produce videos, artwork, T-shirt designs, even alternate versions of your recorded music.

Bottom line: Get fans involved and allow them to be co-creators in your success story!

These are just some of the new rules of internet music marketing, but they’re the most important ones. Focus on them and you will see more results, more fans, and more money.