We, the audience series; (part 5) the lost audience – how the music business broke faith with its main supporters (III)

Television presents another possibility for reaching the “lost audience,” especially as two things happen: web technology and television start to converge and niche cable/satellite networks continue to spring up like crocuses in spring. Broadcast advertising costs a fortune, but cable advertising costs less – still pricey, but you can buy 30 seconds in the wee hours of the morning on some cable stations for under $30. Sell a handful of CDs, bring people to your website, get the word out, and you could reap some return on investment.

Of course, there’s the old standby, print. Especially in these post-September 11 days, when print ad revenues have fallen through the floor, magazines, newspapers, and zines certainly remain the most cost-effective advertising vehicles. And even if a musician or record company trying to reach this audience lacks an advertising budget, a good PR campaign with the correct hook can get people onto the internet or into the record store.

Perhaps the record business is beginning to get it. In 2003, a terrible year in general for the record business, CD purchases actually went up by 6 percent among consumers between the ages of 55 and 64. Analysts credited the phenomenon of Norah Jones, and Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook.

The early years of the new millennium have seen many businesses go through cataclysmic changes. People who continue to do business as if nothing has changed in the last 20 years will get left in the dust eventually. That’s just the nature of things. Ironically, as things in the music business change, the landscape begins to look more like it did 50 years ago, with many small companies in the early stages of reaching, or at least reaching out to, their niche audiences and making a living by doing so.

Of course, the methods of marketing are very different now, and my suggestions offer just the sketchiest outline of how to approach this. I’d be marketing right now instead of writing this series if I knew definitively how to get it done. The person who gets this to a science might become the wealthiest person in the forthcoming economy, at least as far as the record business is concerned. The audience is out there, just waiting to be reached.