by Ian on November 4, 2011
I’ve been looking at how to promote music on Spotify.
There’s a couple of things that I needed to sort out for artists that I work with relating to their presence on Spotify. That led me to start to make some decisions about the basics of using Spotify for promotion as a musician – so this is what I have uncovered so far as it applied to the issues I was having.
This is just about getting the basics right to start with – I think I’m right, but it’s a work in progress, so let me know what else you know!
The obvious issue is that with Spotify getting serious traction in the UK and the US, any artist would be a fool not to use it, have their music on there and work out how to maximise that exposure.
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by Ian on October 20, 2011
Image courtesy of 'letthesunshine'
“How do I get noticed?”
We get asked that…. a lot.
People approach us all the time – both as a result of writing the posts on this site and in our day jobs as managers and consultants.
And then, about half of the people who ask that, follow up with a second question.
“Is my music good enough?”
The first question is what we aim to spend the majority of our time and effort on this blog answering. It comes down to using best practice methods for marketing and promotion.
We favour a particular systematic approach to build momentum and to try to achieve a critical mass that will sustain your career.
But it’s the second question that actually really matters.
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by Ian on October 11, 2011
I used to be a music lawyer and I was a bit of an authority (for a while) on sampling and sample clearance in the early ’90′s.
Then I ran a bunch of dance labels and worked with a lot of electronic artists.
I have cleared a lot of samples but I have released way more records with samples in them that we didn’t bother to clear.
Why?
Because we thought that no-one would notice that we’d used their music – these were generally small specialist underground records – and that if they did, we would be able to agree something after the event, if the need ever arose.
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by Ian on October 5, 2011
Want to know the state of the music industry right now and where it’s headed?
Want to know what some of the sharpest marketing minds in the world think are the things that matter in the future of music?
If so, I’d take the time to read this presentation from J. Walter Thompson.
These people know their stuff seeing as they are the leading marketing agency in the world.
The presentation covers a very wide range of topics, starting with looking at where the music business is right now. It then looks at the sea changes that are occurring in the consumption of music (streaming being paramount) but also in music production and promotion.
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by Ian on September 30, 2011
I’m very short of tech skills!
That’s an issue today as I need to make sure that I don’t fall foul of the overnight Facebook Fan Page SSL changes.
If I do, come tomorrow, parts of our Fan Page will be disabled.
Maybe yours will too?
It made me think that it’s worth bearing in mind that it doesn’t matter if you’re lacking in the geek department. I so often hear from artists that they can’t get a website built or maintain it as they don’t know HTML or WordPress.
That’s bollocks.
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by Ian on September 28, 2011
If you want to learn how to use YouTube, it would be nice to learn from the people at YouTube themselves.
You already know that every musician can benefit from having a lot of video on YouTube, whether it’s traditional videos, lyric videos, simple videos of audio against a sleeve image or backstage/rehearsal footage.
You film it, upload it and hopefully it’ll attract attention, be spread by existing fans and lead people to discover you and your music.
That’s the idea. And it works – there can be no doubt.
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