Why Digital?
Wednesday, March 18,2009
“Digital Marketing is certainly an important strategy in
today’s music industry, but even more so for tomorrow’s.”
It has been apparent for some time now that the music industry is slowly being swallowed and digested by the Digital Music revolution. While this has been a grimacing struggle for major labels, it has proven to be a powerful Trojan horse for independent artists and labels alike. The universal availability of music provided by Online Mp3 outlets, whether they be “add-to-cart” stores, a la iTunes, or subscription services, such as Rhapsody, has levelled the playing field in terms of distribution and market penetration. Services such as CD Baby have parted the seas for those indie-artists looking, not only to sell physical Cds via the Internet, but to infiltrate the Mp3 realm as well. The incubation of “Buy Now” widgets, such as Snocap and Downloadcentric.com, has also sparked a promising light at the end of the ecommerce tunnel. These portable web applications allow artists to embed Mp3 stores directly on their websites and/or social networking pages, eliminating the middle man. Almost.
Okay, so now that you’re album is just as attainable to the average consumer as any major label act, how do you go about boosting your sales? Even without major label promotion, there is a lot you can do on your own to garner attention from potential fans. The primary means of reaching new listeners is through the many Social Networking arenas made available to Internet users, free of charge. Until now, the standard for shameless self promotion via profile pages has been MySpace. Although more recently Facebook has become more tolerant of allowing entrepreneurial musicians to promote themselves through the addition of “Artist Pages”, music applications and paid click-through ads. There are a handful of other artist-friendly networks worth exploring, such as Hi5, iMeem, iLike, Bebo, Pure Volume and Friendster, among others. For the purposes of this discussion, we won’t go into video – but there are obviously countless arenas for free promotion in that department as well, most importantly YouTube.
Some sites “of a different color” that offer artist-specific perks are iSound, which has a good Mp3 store option; Reverb Nation, which features excellent widgets for facilitating the viral spread of your music; and Last.fm, which doubles as a streaming Internet radio service which you can upload your songs to. These sites are particularly strong for promotion of independent musicians because of the emphasis they place on listing tags and similar artists. One problem new and unsigned acts face is the challenge of tapping into pre-existing fan bases. The inclusion of tags and similar artists on a profile page can greatly increase the probability that listeners within the target demographic will “stumble” onto new music they actually like.
Of course, there is always the “you can lead a horse to water…” axiom at play when it comes to Internet marketing and promotion. It goes without saying that you can promote your music until you’re blue in the face - but if it’s no good, you probably won’t get an overwhelming response. However, if your music happens to be good you may be blessed with a viral spread fuelling sales on a global scale. The fact is that as the entertainment industry gradually merges into one digital vanishing point, major labels and indie-artists alike would be foolish not to invest time, and possibly money, into digital marketing of some sort.