This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
(And the Other Top 4 Reasons Your Email Isn’t Being Returned)
I am a big believer in doing as much legwork on your own as you possibly can before reaching out to music industry executives. That being said- there comes a time in every artist’s career where they are going to have to approach someone in the industry to get to that proverbial next level. Let me assure you that there is a right way of doing this … and several wrong ways of doing this. Sadly, many artists repeatedly write emails that go right into the trash because of very basic mistakes that can be easily avoided.
Obviously the first and most basic rule of the approach is “Don’t approach someone with a cold email if you can avoid it;” knowing someone who knows the person you are trying to get in touch with can help a great deal. However, I realize that going in with a strong referral isn’t always an option. Consider the top 5 suggestions below when you’re putting together your next cold email.
1) Form Letters
Sure, you may be able to get your message out to hundreds or even thousands of people. But if people feel like you are sending them a form letter (don’t confuse this with a newsletter – that’s a whole other blog post) about a specific need or a desired business relationship, then it’s over. No one likes to feel like they are just a name on a list. And speaking of names on a list, sending an email to yourself and cc-ing rather than bcc-ing everyone won’t win you any favors from people who hold positions where both bot-generated and musician-generated spam mail comes with the territory.
It is perfectly acceptable to cut and paste part of a letter to a certain type of executive, but at least take the time to customize the first few sentences and address them by name. Also, let the person you are contacting know specifically why you are contacting them. What makes you think you are a good fit for what they do and why? Let’s just say you are looking to approach a blogger. Saying something like, “I just read your story on this other artist and I really like the way it was written. I thought that since you liked what they do you might appreciate my new single…” is much more likely to get a response than a press release about your new product addressed to no one in particular.
2) Poor Presentation
This is so common it boggles the mind. I often get emails from people in which their names are not obvious from the email address and not included in the “from” field by their email program. On top of that, they don’t bother to introduce themselves or put any kind of signature indicating who they are or where they are from. From my vantage point, I am getting a message from SlappyMcJellyPants@Yahoo.com. The rest of the email had better be stellar (or at least very funny) for me to consider responding.
*As a side note, I’m damn easy to get a hold of. I am in the business of selling music marketing services so it is part of my job to be as reachable as possible. That said, it isn’t hard to tell from presentation who is taking their career and image seriously and who is not. If there are people out there who are having trouble getting a hold of me, then they can forget about people who are really difficult to contact cold like A&R people, Music Supervisors and music journalists. *
Another huge issue in presentation is spelling and grammar. Look, I’m no grammar Nazi and I would be completely lost without spell check, but reaching out to a stranger for help and then sending them what looks more like a text to your girlfriend is probably not a great idea. This all might sound silly, but I have found a huge correlation between the way people present themselves on email and how together their career is, and I respond to emails in order of the likelihood that I am dealing with someone who is serious (and willing to work!)
Lastly on the presentation front: Saying you have talent is meaningless. Executives hear this all day long. The best thing you can do to get someone’s attention is to make a concentrated effort on your pitch prior to crafting any email and running it by friends and peers that can be honest with you. What turns my head is not when people talk about their talent, but when they describe the achievements that they have earned with their talent. Are you drawing well or playing with more established artists? Are you working with anyone who has great credits? Did you win a local contest? Do you have a ton of social media followers and an obvious dialogue with fans online? Do you have a mailing list with a ton of people on it? These are the things that will get people’s attention.
3) Lack of Research
You can much more easily begin a personal relationship with someone when you have specifics about their job function and their professional history. With blogs, Linkedin and any of the other resources available online these days there is no excuse not to have a good understanding of what people have done in the past and on which projects they have worked. Knowing these things can go a long way in adding a personal touch to the email you are sending someone. I am always flattered that people took the time to read about me before reaching out. Admittedly I’m usually annoyed when people don’t bother to read anything and just ask for help without knowing who I am or what I do. And in my case, all that information is provided in a link right next to the contact link. I get intoxicated calls on my Google Voicemail at 3am on a Sunday from people wanting a record deal (from me … even though I don’t run a label) or want me to manage them (I don’t manage artists). My favorite call to date was someone asking for Jay-Z’s phone number (which I still don’t have) and then offering me 50% of the guaranteed collaboration that would result from me giving it to him.
Beyond the research on any one individual though it is important that you also research understand the mindset of a person who is the gatekeeper (Music supervisors, A&R people, Publishers, major journalists etc.) of big opportunities. Firstly, they can’t possibly return all the correspondences or listen to all of the music they get. Secondly – and this is especially true with big organizations – virtually no one executive makes 100% of the decision about a song getting placed in a movie, getting a major write up in a big magazine or getting someone signed to a record label or publisher. Damn near every executive these days has a boss, a client or someone else who guards the purse strings to contend with before pulling the trigger on a decision that could really help your career as an artist. The second part of the job is important to note also, because the easiest part of a gatekeeper’s job is getting in a steady flow of music to pick from. The hardest part of a gatekeeper’s job is keeping a gatekeeper job. It’s easy to think of these people as people who sit around listening to music all day on a pedestal and then giving a Ceasar-esque thumbs up or thumbs down. The politics and juggling involved with keeping everyone happy internally and making sure your external relationships are sound in case you are out of a gig (there is a high turnover rate with creative jobs like this) are almost full-time jobs in and of themselves. Long story short, like these people or hate them, it’s important to know before you approach them that they are often pretty stressed out.
4) Unreasonable Expectations
The next time you go out on a first date… or hell, the next time you encounter someone attractive from a distance, you should briskly walk up to them, say “Hello my name is _____,” and while heading towards them at an uncomfortable pace (preferably without letting them reply to your hello), you should attempt to French kiss them. This is actually best done when starting with your tongue fully extended from a distance of 20 yards or more at a full sprint.
* Editor’s note: Actually, don’t try this. I am not responsible for the whiplash, broken jaw or harassment suits that may follow if you do*
Now you might be thinking, “Wow that was unexpected/inappropriate/ scary…” Yes, indeed. It is. What is my point? Well, my point is that bluntly asking for a huge favor, a contract, a partnership, a record deal or any other lasting business relationship from a stranger in a first email is equally inappropriate (although admittedly it is considerably less creepy). I can’t tell you how many emails I get without any information, background or even someone’s name that say something to the effect of “Help! I am really talented and I need you to manage me.” Not that I manage people, but if I did, would I want to partner with someone who was willing to blindly decide that I was the one to guide their career without having met me or had a phone call? Boundaries, people!
Those are some extreme examples obviously, but the real point is, take your time to get to know someone and what they do. Breaking the ice with an email never instantly leads to a partially executed contract on your doorstep. It’s supposed to lead to building a relationship and getting someone to take you seriously enough to give your material their time and attention.
5) Undefined Goals
Vague emails are really hard to respond to. A very common request I get (and I’m sorry, I know I reference this a great deal) is about “getting to the next level”. Do I understand in a general way what it means? Sure. Do I know specifically what people mean by that and what they need or if I am a good fit for getting these people to said next level? No, I don’t have a clue.
Before asking someone else, make sure that you have clearly defined your goals. Many people respond with knee-jerk responses like, “I want a publishing deal,” or “I need a booking agent.” It’s important to break down these wants into what most people actually mean. What people forget is that for every brilliant partnership, there are plenty of lousy ones. And many of the lousy ones result from people not taking the time to really think through their needs and desires.
When you say, “I need a publishing deal,” do you mean, “I would like…” (‘cause really, people – we need food, water, shelter and good health; lighten up). Don’t you really mean, “I want someone to help me get my music placed in film and TV and arrange collaborations and co-writes with other artists I like and respect”? Maybe it means something else to you. But whatever it means to you, write it out for yourself. Be specific without making a plan that hinges on the participation of a person or a business to which you don’t have access.
Of course, it need not apply to only publishing deals; it can be for whichever goals you have for yourself. One of the most encouraging things you can do in the eyes of a gatekeeper is to demonstrate that with or without their help, you are making progress in getting where you want to go.
I realize I am no longer a gatekeeper but I certainly sat behind a desk where dreams went to die for many years. Still – if you would like to check out a more current A&R person’s vantage point on the approach check out my interview with Jason Jordan VP of A&R at Hollywood Records – here.
Brannon McAllister is the co-founder and designer of NoiseTrade, an online service that offers free music to fans of artists in exchange for their contact information: an email address and zip code. Prior to working with the site, Brannon did record packaging and websites for a variety of artists in the Nashville music scene. However, he attributes most of what he learned about the economics of free music and the music industry in general to being part of the process of building NoiseTrade.
I recently chatted with Brannon about building a successful free music service, how his platform can benefit artists and strategies artists can increase their chances of success within the current climate of the music industry.
So How does NoiseTrade work?
BM:
When artists sign up for NoiseTrade, they can post a single, a live show or a full album. Fans then download the music in exchange for their emails and zip codes, which can be imported into any mailing list application, including FanBridge, Emma, Constant Contact and MailChimp. Many of these services allow artists to send localized email blasts to promote specific shows and / or manage mass mailings to promote upcoming albums, song placements, festivals or national tours.
The site widget can be embedded on artists’ sites, either on a splash page in front, on the home page or even within an online store.
How many artists are currently using your service?
BM:
The site has approximately 4,000 artists. We handle well over 100,000 downloads through the site per month, and about five-ten artists join the site every day. The quality ranges from 14-year olds with a microphone to bands like the Civil Wars, a band that used NoiseTrade to gain thousands of new fans, and currently (Early Feb 2011) has the #1 spot on iTunes.
How did the idea for NoiseTrade come together?
BM:
The first I heard about it was back in 2006. Derek Webb, who’s a songwriter that I’d followed for a few years called me up and said he wanted to meet up at Jammin Java, which is a coffee house based music venue down in Columbia, SC. I drove down from Greenville where I lived at the time and we met up for coffee and talked a bit. He explained this idea he’d had for a while. His own record Mockingbird had come out recently, and there were the seeds of the idea for the whole platform at this time. In September of 2006, he gave away Mockingbird and just required fans to type in five e-mail addresses and zip codes. In about 3 months time, he gave away 80,000 copies; 20,000 was in the first day, the next 20,000 was in the next week and so on.
I’m not very familiar with him as an artist. Did he already have a pretty big fan base?
BM:
The record he’d given away had released earlier that year, and he’d sold about 20,000 copies. He had a pretty decent-sized following. From there, it was a proof of concept. Because the album giveaway went so well, we were sure we had a great idea to apply to the overall platform. We started working on it, and it took quite a while to launch. We launched the site on July 4, 2008 and required fans to enter five email addresses. Some of the other platforms like Twitter and Facebook weren’t quite as dominant as they are now. And at the time, having fans refer their friends by email was our best way forward.
Tell me about the product as it is today. There are so many platforms now. What are the strengths of NoiseTrade vs. any of the other folks collecting email addresses: Nimbit; TopSpin, etc.?
BM:
I think our first priority is been to make it free on both ends of the equation. We make it free for our artists and our fans. We’re making free music, but we’re also providing the platform for free. At this time we find providing the basic level of service for free to the artist enables more artists to join the platform than would otherwise. It encourages a long tail vs. just artists that already understand the economics of free. Initially we did have a sign-up fee of $250 for our artists. Over time, we found the way to run our business without having to charge the artist that startup fee. It just made a lot more sense to provide it for free.
How is it that your business makes money?
BM:
Fans can tip the artists at the end of the download process. They type their email address and zip code and are given a chance to give the artist a tip, anywhere between $1 and $100. NoiseTrade keeps 20% of that transaction, and the artist gets 80%. What’s nice about that model is that it immediately covers all our bandwidth costs. As long as the proportions stay pretty regular, that scales along with the overall growth of the site and covers all the costs of running the site.
Which percentage of people actually do tip in exchange for the free music?
BM:
I’d say 5%, so it’s not very many at all. But I will say that when artists ask fans to tip a certain amount of money, the percentage goes drastically up. Left to their own, 5% of fans are going to give money if they are given a choice. But if an artist actually builds a landing page for a campaign and leaves a message for fans saying, “We think this is worth $6” or “We think this is worth $8,” a much greater percentage will tip at a higher rate. And then when people do tip it’s pretty good. The average tip is between $4 and $5.
We usually tell our artists that they can expect between 3% and 15% of fans to tip, depending on how much they are willing to push for it. If you’re an artist that is mainly concerned about building a mailing list, you just focus on telling your fans it’s free and don’t worry about the tips. Many artists earn a few hundred dollars on tips, but a couple have netted as much as $4,500 in a few months.
Say you were trying to explain NoiseTrade to my mom- she’s never used a computer. How would you explain this platform to her? What is the value proposition for a band?
BM:
Basically, it’s simply a way for artists to exchange music for information about their fans. Ultimately, it’s providing the fans with what they want, which is free music, and the artists what they want, which is fans that have never heard of them through recommendations and information about where those fans live and how to contact them. We still collect zip codes and emails.
Is there a back end? Is that dumped into a .csv, or do you have a mail management client as well?
BM:
We provide the artists with a .csv. They can easily click a single button and down comes the contact file they can drop into Emma or Mail Chimp or whatever they choose.
What about sharing options? Where can you move this, embed this, place this?
BM:
As far as simply sharing a link, you can obviously do that through Facebook and Twitter. But we use an embed code to be able to let artists embed the widget on any website. We even have some artists that build a simple landing page that explains to fans what to do and what the album is, so they can brand it however they want. Using the NoiseTrade landing page is also really helpful and gives fans a more direct way to share and find information about the artist.
Who have been some of the DIY artists that have had success on the platform, and what is it you think they’ve done with the platform that was more effective than others?
BM:
I think that artists that have the most success with it are those that actually turn it into a campaign. Rather than simply uploading music and expecting people to show up and download it, they’re messaging their core fan base already. They’re prepping them for it by building anticipation towards the free music and then messaging their fans hard about it throughout a campaign. Artists that have done a really good job in various ways would be Katie Herzig. She has a growing fan base and often opens for Brandi Carlile. At her shows she can mention she has free music available. I think some of the ways she’s done a great job is that depending on the situation, she’ll change up her strategy. For example, if she has a song that’s featured on a television show, she’ll feature that one single on her widget for a short period of time, for a week or so. As people find out about her after hearing her song in the show, they’ll find that same free song available for the cost of signing up for her mailing list. In some cases she’s even given away a full album.
Artists that post music and don’t put in any effort may see very little results: only 50 or 100 downloads. But some of our most well-known artists have seen anywhere from 15,000-40,000 downloads over the course of several months. Most professional artists that give it a real effort tend to fall between 1,500 and 7,000 downloads.
I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit, because you actually have the design skill set that makes your perspective even more interesting. I would love to talk to you about some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen with artists packaging themselves from a design perspective with their album covers, press materials, websites and other materials. What advice would you give to artists looking to find and hire a designer, or things they should keep in mind when designing their own stuff? Let’s start with an album cover.
BM:
I think in the days when artists’ records were going to be stacked up on a shelf, where you’re seeing the top spine as you’re flipping through it, the pressure was on to make sure the title or artist’s name was high up on the artwork. I don’t think that’s as big a deal these days. The key things for artists now is to not make their name too small. They need to design it with postage-stamp-sized icons on iTunes in mind. This might help artists lean towards a bolder design in their color scheme that will be more eye catching on a smaller scale. I even see artists on NoiseTrade making the name of their band absolutely tiny, and it makes no sense for a 240 pixels square.
That’s true. You are really left with a Chicklet of the album artwork sometimes. What about from a web design perspective?
BM:
One thing that’s true is that I think artists can get away with a lot more simplicity in their web design than they think they can. I think most artists could actually do fine with a single splash page that has all their connecting points on that one page. I’m thinking in terms of a Twitter feed, a Fan box from Facebook, tour dates, some album cover and a link to iTunes and Amazon. As long as they have that on a single page, I feel like they should go ahead and use that for their website and then spend most of their time out on social networks talking to fans and using the social media space as a home base, rather than creating a huge website presence. There are artists that need to create a huge community and do a huge main site. But I think the majority of artists are going to be served just fine by a single splash page.
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To learn more about Brannon and NoiseTrade visit the NoiseTrade website. You can also keep up with Brannon via his blog or Twitter.
One of the more common questions and / or complaints I get from artists is about the Google Onebox song results. Artists tell me they are not getting their music to show up at all in these results or they are getting very old records showing up when they want their newer material represented.
The Google One Box music results are the top results below that provide streaming music for a Google search of U2:
I wish this was an article where I provide an easy solution to the problem but unfortunately it is just a discussion of said problem and a cry for help on behalf of the literally dozens of artists who have asked me this question in the last several months.
(interestingly enough as of the time of the writing of this article every Google Onebox result I have clicked on today has lead to a dead link so perhaps there is some kind of fix in the works).
(It has since gone back to working again a few hours later)
I make no claim to fully understand this process but this is what I have been able to piece together from speaking to different people at different ends of this problem.
This is what I have been told by people who are in the know (or at least supposed to be in the know) happens with these results:
Your record gets distributed via your distribution company (Tunecore, ReverbNation, CDBaby, The Orchard, IODA etc) to a company called Medianet and / or MySpace premium content.
Now per a former executive at iLike – which is the company that was purchased and then subsequently gutted by MySpace music the way this content gets pulled across is as follows:
“The Google Onebox does in fact pull from us MediaNet and MySpace premium content, however they push to production at their discretion. What we have seen to be the trend is the most popular songs from the info those partners feed over. We don’t have any way at this time to control how it appears, artists can definitely reach out to Google to express their desires however as busy as they are it is unlikely it will be a fast turn around. “
Calls to MediaNet per several artists I have worked with usually get forwarded to MySpace / iLike. Contacting Google… well I have a few open questions on a dated thread on this topic and thus far no luck. With iLike seemingly being completely dismantled (or perhaps just being left with a Skeleton crew?) There seems to be no more help coming from that direction.
There is an interesting footnote to the story. I was told by a former executive at one of these companies that when the Music OneBox initiative was implemented there were great hopes for the number of clickthroughs and purchases. He stated that when Sony Music came back with their results after a short trial period that their clickthroughs were “ 1/1000th” of what was predicted. If you don’t have a result there or have dated material up – I guess this is good news?
Anyway- this isn’t much of my typical post but I figured that if anyone has any more insight, stories about trying to fix the problem or has good relationships with any of the folks involved with this process – please leave some details in the comments?
-R-
Matt Howe is the Manager of Business Development and Music Content at the rapidly-growing video site UStream. He got his feet wet in the music business right out of college, working for a small London-based independent label called Adventure Records, working with the former head of Virgin Records in the UK. Matt then moved on and worked in the International Department at EMI Music for two years as a coordinator and junior project manager, where he worked with major artists such as Coldplay, Robbie Williams and Radiohead. While working on Coldplay’s X&Y record through EMI, he established a close relationship with Capitol Records team, and was asked to move to L.A. in 2005 to become marketing manager.
He eventually made his way back to EMI Music, this time in Santa Monica, CA, where he took a position as Director of Strategic Marketing and Business Development to help the company transform the way they managed their internal communication systems about artist releases, licensing, selling and managing the A&R staff. He moved back to the UK in 2009 and worked as an independent consultant for EMI out of its Kensington offices, where he worked on some international releases for several bands, including 30 Seconds to Mars and Alice in Chains. He was offered his current UStream position through a Myspace friend that was running its business development department and wanted an experienced head of music content.
Recently, I spoke with Matt about the explosive growth of the UStream platform in the past year and how artists can leverage it to improve relationships with their fans and strengthen their marketing plans.
What is your role at UStream?
MH:
It’s really two pronged. The first part, and the one that’s really the most intensive, is dealing with incoming inquiries from artists, labels, publishers, managers, etc. and trying to make sure we support all our premium music partners and make sure they’re set up well on the platform, that their channels are created properly, that they have all our latest product developments switched on, that the channels are skinned correctly, that we build out the Facebook applications, etc. and help them with that, and in instances help them with broadcasts when we can. That’s probably the lion’s share of work here. We’re in a very fortunate position at UStream where we’re the preeminent live streaming video service in the music space, so we get a lot of incoming calls, which is great.
On the other hand, another part of my job is more proactively going out and trying to find partners for product launches, trying to strategize internally with our product team and the rest of our business development and sales teams as well so we can find out areas we should be focusing on. Revenue is definitely going to be and has been a big focus for this year for the company. How do we turn this from a traditional ad supported internet business into something where we can actually make money, as opposed to just keep the lights on? We’re going to focus on some of the more revenue-based models and try to figure out where and how they best apply to the music space, and then communicate that through to partners and launching products around suitable partners within the music space.
Your world view must be very interesting given that live video available to the masses in that way in a broadcast kind of medium is still rather new, at least in terms of being this easily and widely available. Are you seeing anyone use this medium particularly well? Can you cite some examples of people that are really using the channel to present and market themselves successfully?
MH:
I can tell you some of the biggest broadcasts we’ve done in the video space in the last year and a half or so. I’d say Kiss is one of the most active artists in our platform in terms of streaming concerts and doing press releases and announcing dates, etc. They use the platform very well, and their management team works with us very closely. Nathan Gregory over there works with us. They get it, and when they can, and when the production is available, they use us very well. I think they still are responsible for our biggest music event to date. They streamed a concert with us from the Staple Center late 2009, and that got us two million streams live, which was pretty insane. That still stands as our biggest broadcast to date. Bon Jovi is another band that has used us a lot, and has used us to good effect. We deal mainly with the guys over at Sparkart. We’ve streamed quite a few concerts with the band, including one from Dallas in April, 2010, which got 1.5 million live streams and over a million uniques, which is again pretty huge. We also recently streamed a concert of theirs from Melbourne. We actually as a company have a pretty large Asian presence. Soft Bank, Japan invested heavily in the company early on last year, so we have a joint venture out in Japan called UStream Japan. We streamed the Bon Jovi Melbourne concert with a lot of support from the Asian office. Even when the band isn’t doing web chats or streaming concerts, the guys over at Sparkart have been pretty good at using the platform to stream concert DVDs, etc. to keep the awareness there and keep providing reasons for fans to watch the channel and watch their live content.
Even with the big brands, is consistency a factor? Are you finding that regularly broadcasting or having a regular stream of live or personal footage is helping garner a viewership?
MH:
I would say moving on from the likes of Bon Jovi, which is the biggest single event broadcast we’ve done, when you look at the urban space and urban artists like Lil Twist, Trey Songz and people like that, they’re very engaged and very regularly on our platform. Nikki Minaj and artists of that ilk seem to get it and have no problem going live regularly. They like chatting with their fans and see the value in it. Through them, people like Lil Wayne have come live as well on our platform. Getting that consistent broadcasting content is definitely a challenge. You have to give fans something worthwhile to keep coming back to. Even the most charismatic of artists is probably going to burn out their audience a little bit if they are going live once or twice a week indefinitely or chatting with fans. You want to try to keep it fresh. Those content ideas are challenging.
The production angle is a challenge as well. It’s not always easy when bands are on the road to broadcast live, streaming video. There are certain requirements such as internet capabilities, etc. that might not be readily at hand, and that we’re addressing with a variety of applications, whether they’re web-based broadcast applications or something else. We have a free piece of software you can download called UStream Producer that enables people to broadcast in pretty high quality from their webcams. And then we have a couple mobile solutions, including iPhone and Android broadcast apps as well. We’re hoping that making that technology available and putting it in the hands of our broadcasters will encourage them to go live more regularly. We’re trying to break that barrier between the technology and the medium. Someone like Twitter has done very well with that. We always have our cell phones or our iPhones in our hands, so it’s very easy for artists to update Twitter multiple times a day. But it’s not so easy to grab a video camera and go live streaming if you don’t have a suitable internet connection, or if you’re just out on the streets in New York and you see something cool you want to stream. We’ve been making a lot of strides into the mobile broadcast realm.
It would still be awkward even if you had a myfi in your pocket to walk around with a laptop and try to talk to your audience. You’re right. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be music, but can you talk to me about people who have successfully built brands by leveraging UStream? One of the people that comes to mind that first turned me onto it – although I don’t know him directly and only know his work – was Gary Vaynerchuk, who wrote a book Crush and advocated it was a great way to dominate a niche for informational products. Have you seen fine artists who did not come in having an established brand use the product with success?
MH:
That’s a really good question. To be perfectly honest, we have had examples of artists who used the product before they were household names and then subsequently broke through to the mainstream. I’d say Nikki Minaj is a good example of this. But I would in no way say their use of UStream was a contributing factor to their success necessarily.
I think it’s safe to say it was probably one of them.
MH:
As part of a broader new media strategy that these artists are employing, and a much more accessible profile to their fan base, I definitely think we fit into an important part of that. I do think when you talk about Twitter and Facebook, we all know the biggest artists out there that are updating those feeds, and they can be easily ghostwritten. But there’s no way to get in front of a video camera and replicate talking live to your fans. I definitely think there are some artists – and Nikki Minaj and also Trey Songz would be examples of that – who have used us as part of broader and more engaged policy with their fans, and then in conjunction with traditional media have broken through to the mainstream.
So, forget about music for a second, because frankly what your market is becomes less and less important, because it becomes “Can you adapt people’s strategies to a different medium?” Are there people that have used UStream who cite that as an important tool to their rise outside the music space?
MH:
Absolutely. I would say there are actually some really weird ones. We see a lot of activity in the animal channels. We had a Shiba Inu cam, where this family was basically streaming an enclosure of their Shiba Inu puppies 24/7, and it was getting significant numbers. I’d say even weirder we have what’s called the Owl Cam which is a couple in I think South Carolina that put a webcam in a bird box in their garden because these owls had been nesting and mating in this bird box for years. They stuck a webcam in there and started streaming it, and I think to date they’ve had 30 million streams of the owl cam. They’ve built a business purely from the technology platform we provided. They’ve sold merchandise and have a fan club and built a business off they technology we’ve provided.
So, a $200 webcam and a UStream channel and Café Press founded a business.
MH:
It’s crazy. They’ve been getting tens of millions of streams of their owl cam, they’re selling merchandise off that. Fans of these things are some of the most rabid fans we have on the platform too. If there are technology problems or interruptions to the broadcasting, we hear about it. There are fans out there that are extremely dedicated to that channel. As we all know, the long-tail hypothesis applied to niche markets can be hugely profitable. That couple has definitely built a business purely off UStream. We actually had a company meeting at our head offices last year in San Francisco and flew them in as our guests of honor as an example of what we’re doing with not even premium content providers, but just mom and pop living in the middle of America. That’s definitely a great example.
When I work with artists’ marketing, I tell people that websites are no longer billboards, but they become the “You” news channel. Are you finding a lot of people are scheduling content mimicking what we grew up with on TV? Is it similar to, “Tune in every Tuesday at 8:00 for the Owl Chat?”
MH:
No. I think with the channels like the owl cam and Shiba Inu cams, the big draw is that they’re running all the time. These people are on 24/7, so you can tune it at any time and watch. It’s especially challenging in the music space as well to get scheduled programming far enough in advance where it can be adequately marketed to the artists’ fan base. Most of my week is reactive. We have artists small to large reaching out on a moment’s notice saying, “We’re going to go live in five hours’ time. What can we do?” And that narrows the window of them being able to do anything to market to that fan base.
Let’s talk about that conversation. If an artist comes to you and says, “We’d like to go live in a few hours. How can I market?” what do you say?
MH:
We just had the craziest one. We’ve been trying to get Kanye West on here for a while, and he was in South Korea before the launch of his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Dream album, and we got a call from him and Island Def Jam to say he’s at an airport in South Korea, his plane leaves in two hours, and he wants to get up and do a web chat and premiere his latest video. We had been trying for so long to get him on board, and no one on his side had set up a channel, so we got our VIP support guy and one of our account managers on the phone and within the matter of an hour skinned a channel together and got a live broadcast with him. But the only other avenues open to market the direct-to-fan model Kanye has are Facebook and the like. So, he blasted it out on Facebook and Twitter. But it leaves us little time to put it on our home page, which gets hundreds of thousands of uniques per day. And it gives us very little time to reach out and get people to schedule this into heir day. That’s the challenge, not just with the Kanyes, but with the other artists out there. We get developing bands from all over the world that will reach out on very short notice and say, “We’re planning to go live at X time. What can you do for us?”
I guess the question is, how would you advise an artist who gave you enough time to market an upcoming concert or broadcast?
MH:
The strongest avenues for marketing still reside with the talent. We’re a pretty heavily trafficked website at this point. We have over 100,000 uniques per day on our home page. We stream somewhere in the region of 17 million videos per month, according to our most recent figures. But we still see, when we’re promote something heavily on our home page, and to our 1.5 million followers on Twitter, if we’re doing this for an artist that doesn’t have a particularly engaged audience online, if they don’t have a particularly high number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers, then all the promotion in the world for us will not create a huge uptick in what we would expect to see. It’s when you see artists like Snoop Dog, or you see artists like The Main, who is a developing band on Warner Bros., who had a pretty active online presence. When they went on Twitter and Facebook 72 hours in advance of a show they were streaming with us, they drove a lot of traffic. The main avenues for marketing and bringing eyeballs to broadcasts still resides with the artists. It invariably means Twitter and Facebook these days. They’re the two easiest launch points to drive traffic over to our platform.
In addition as well, to talk a bit more about Facebook, what has proved very popular with all artists I’ve worked with in the music space has been our custom viewing application for Facebook, where if we’re given the Facebook URL and the UStream channel URL, we can usually within 24-48 hours build a custom Facebook viewing application that the artist can then imbed on their Facebook page. You can go to John Mayer’s Facebook page or probably Kiss’ Facebook page and see examples of those. The fan just needs to click the UStream tab, and they don’t even need to leave the Facebook application to view the broadcast. Obviously we don’t get the page views, but we get the streaming numbers. That’s proved very popular, and we’re trying to figure out more seamless ways of reaching fans and helping artists connect with their fans on those platforms.
To learn more about Matt and the UStream platform and its many tools for artists and other brands, you can visit the company’s website or follow UStream on Twitter.
With 15 years of music industry experience, Dan Kruchkow is currently the Head of Digital Strategies at Crush Management. He got his start as a summer intern for EMI Records in New York City in the mid-1990s. He eventually found himself at Rocket Records, a subsidiary of Island Records, in 1999, where he worked on several Elton John albums and worked closely with major radio mogul Johnny Barbis. This eventually led to a job in the A&R department at Island Def Jam in its early days, where Dan also witnessed the birth of the New Media Department just as the idea of digital music was emerging. Throughout the 2000s, he rose through the ranks of Island Def Jam, eventually following his interest in burgeoning music and technology developments to take over the digital sales and marketing department for several years. While there he created digital plans for artists like the killers, Kanye West, Rhianna and Fall Out Boy. At Crush, Dan has worked with bands and artists such as Fall Out Boy, Train, Courtney Love, Travie McCoy of Gym Class Heroes and Panic at the Disco.
We spoke recently about his company, Crush Management, how digital strategy and management work together, and how artists can use digital tools to build their careers and create a strong online presence.
Tell me exactly what your gig is like now. What does digital strategy look like day in and day out?
DK:
I think the best way to describe what I do is to say that I help our artists’ overall careers on daily basis. Digital strategy is not only about their records and the singles. It’s about the touring and how that relates to their relationships with their fans and how the bands release their content onto the internet and so on. That’s probably the one- or two-line gist of what we do. At the end of the day, the ideas come from the bands, and we help them get things done using their vision. It’s important for the band to be involved and not told what to do. It should be what they want to do.
Can you tell me some of the things you believe are essential as a result of your position with new media and now your work with the management side in terms of fan engagement in the digital sector?
DK:
I think artists need to speak to their fans and shouldn’t have someone speaking to them for them. If they’re not doing it themselves, the B.S. detector is pretty high these days. People can tell if it’s not real. Being real is probably the most important thing you can do right now aside from creating great music.
What about methods of delivery for that message? Are there a handful that you think are absolutely required at this stage?
DK:
They’re almost standard equipment at this point: a Facebook profile; a Twitter account; a YouTube profile. And Tumblr’s a huge community that the entire industry has started gravitating towards in the past year or so. The entire hip hop industry is moving over to Tumblr as we speak. I think the official website for the artist, when done right, is really important as well.
When you start working with a band, what would you say is the most common area that comes up that needs fixing?
DK:
I think you have to take a step back and think about being on the internet and Googling a band name. Maybe you find their Twitter profile and everything else like that. But everything should be connected. It shouldn’t be difficult to get from one place to the other, there shouldn’t be information that’s on one place but not the other. Whatever your current priority is – whether it’s a single or a video or a tour or new music in general or a buildup to a tour – that should be front and center. You shouldn’t make people hunt for things. It should be very easy. The reality is, they’re one click away from leaving. Make it easy for them, so they can find exactly what they are looking for on your site, whether it’s your Facebook page or your website. That way next time they know they can just go there. And then you have them. Then it becomes very easy to talk to people so they know what’s going on.
Here’s a question for you. There are a lot of people coming out of traditional marketing schools of thought and putting up landing pages – squeeze pages – for music. Is that something you would recommend people employing? Squeeze pages come in all kinds of types, but I’m talking about pages where they jack up the keyword, or before you get into their websites they make you part with an email address.
DK:
To require data just to get into a website seems a little silly. Maybe to listen to a brand new song or download a free mp3, you should request some data. That’s fair at the right times.
That’s the way I feel about it as well. But there is a trend that’s kind of more like what you would expect when someone is selling insurance, where you end up on a single page that asks you to fill in your email address.
DK:
Well, Jay-Z and Kanye put their new song on their Facebook page. Rather than only giving it to a blog or a radio station, they put it on their Facebook for people to listen. They went from 15,000 to 60,000 fans in less than a day, and now they can talk to 60,000 fans over and over again for free that we know are at the very least interested in hearing their music.
Are there artists who were not brand names pre digital that have an online strategy you think is worth examining for somebody that would want to be in the space?
DK:
I’d like to say everything at Crush Management is like that. But, take a guy like Pete Wentz. He was always into digital from Day One. He probably had the first artist’s blog in 2000 or 2001, before Kanye or anyone else did. He’s always adapted with whatever the current technology is on his own. He was doing a blog on the Fall Out Boy website ten years ago, drifted into Myspace and discovered that one day, drifted onto Twitter and now has one of the biggest artist’s Twitter accounts out there. It’s really cool to see him doing that on his own and following his gut and what feels right. To me it’s really exciting when it just sort of happens, and the artist discovers it themselves.
Having worked with him as long as you did, is there something you can say content wise that artists discuss? I know a lot of artists gripe, “I’d like to keep in contact with my fans, but I don’t really want to talk about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’m eating, because nobody cares.” Other than “hurry up and get interesting,” is there advice you can give along those lines? What should people be discussing on a regular basis?
DK:
Artists can ask their fans what they want to hear. You see a lot of artists say, “Five questions. Go.” And then all of a sudden they answer five questions that were asked that second on Twitter and Facebook, and then they’re gone. But five fans were able to get exactly what they were looking for, and I think that’s kind of cool.
What is it about Tumblr that makes you think it is emerging, and are there any other emerging platforms?
DK:
I think there are two things with Tumblr. One, they have a built in community of millions and millions of people, so there’s an automatic reaction to anything you post that’s interesting in the community. The notion of re-blogging is alive and well there, and it’s very powerful. The reason I think it’s really exploding, especially in music, aside from reading sites like Tech Crunch and all that, you see on Twitter that every artist is posting Tumblr links. In hip hop in general it seems to have really taken hold. It’s a great platform to work with that requires no experience and is dead simple. It just works. It’s the Apple mantra of blogging software. You’re seeing it everywhere, and you’re seeing big reactions.
Which other platforms have a real shot for the future?
DK:
That’s a tough question. If I knew, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here.
I’m partial to UStream, though that’s probably old hat to a guy like you.
DK:
I think live video in general is a good bet, especially when done right. And then you always have the video in demand to do things with. XXL did something really cool yesterday with Static Selektor and Freeway in the studio. They recorded a song, and the whole thing was broadcast live. They had 50,000 viewers. It was XXL’s UStream page. You can probably find it on their blog.
In parting, do you have any tidbits of advice for artists and their online lives that they should definitely think about and be doing?
DK:
I think the most important thing is what I said earlier: keep it real, and make it really easy for your fans. They’re one click away, and when you make it hard, they don’t stick around.
For more about Dan, his company and the artists it represents, visit the Crush Management website. You may also find it helpful to check out Crush client Pete Wentz’s blog on his official website.
Benji Rogers is the founder of Pledge Music – a platform that enables musicians and fans raise money for new records or touring while simultaneously raising money for charity. Prior to founding Pledge Benji played (and actually still plays) in a group called Marwood that were signed to a few different labels in the UK. He started off in the music business as a roadie on various high profile tours. I wanted to catch up with Benji because I had been hearing that large numbers of people were raising money with Pledge – and it was actually working!
Benji, thanks for your time. In your own words tell me what you guys are about and what the vision of the company is.
BR:
I was asked to define what we’re about the other day. One of the business people we are working with said, “What’s your mission statement?” And I think I can really pare it down to this: I want to get as much money in to the hands of artists, their management and their teams as I can, as quickly as possible, thereby putting as much money into the hands of charities as I can as quickly as possible. Basically, I want to create a scenario in which nobody in the transaction loses. The artist wins, the fan wins, the charity wins, the studio wins and the manager wins, because everybody actually gets paid what they are due. That’s the founding principle: to get as much money into the hands of the artist as quickly as possible.
The second founding principle is, it has to be excellent. It has to be the best thing it can be, whether it’s the artist’s campaign or the platform. We won’t let projects launch unless we really feel we’ve gotten the most from the artist creatively in the making of the project, and that we’ve done our job. I like that our business model ties our company’s fate in with the fate of the artist. If we don’t do our job well, the artist doesn’t do well, and nobody wins. If we do our job well, we make sure the campaign has the best chance, and then it’s a success.
Does Pledge actually participate in the marketing of these campaigns?
BR:
What happens is, everybody can sign up on the site, and when they submit the project, we say things like, “This can work, this won’t work, we’ve seen this work, this is illegal, this is improbable.” And we’ve seen some things where we’ve had to consult legal counsel and at one point, we had to consult health and safety as well. It really is an all in process.
One of the reasons we’ve achieved a 77% success rate is because we’re uncompromising in what is possible. We don’t want to limit the artists in what they want to do. We simply say, “This is what works and this is what doesn’t.” The other guiding principle to the way it works is that the artist must at no point appear to be desperate. A lot of times we lose this battle, but what I say is, “Never ask your fans for money.” The job of the platform is to create these incredible campaigns. We’ll help you with them. We do this every day. And there are literally thousands of these back and forth every day between us and the artists. And we’ll say, “This sounds desperate, this is too preachy.” At the end of the day, I want to achieve an 80% success rate. I’m very proud of 77%, but I know why some of those don’t work. We’ve hit a formula that seems to be working again and again. I think it’s really important that artists understand, they don’t need to spend their entire lives blogging or tweeting to do this. What they need to do is spend the right time doing the right things. That’s what we’ve tried to pare the system down to be able to achieve.
Take me through the process of building a typical campaign, once you see an idea you like.
BR:
The fan funding principle, as we call it, is “Pledge here now, and I’ll give you something when I finish.” And there’s a financial transaction involved. That to me is quite prosaic, and a little dull. Ours is a lot different. An artist comes to us and says, “We want to do a new EP. And we want to do nine tour dates and have it come out January 1st, and we have this distributor in mind, and this is a charity we love and have worked with. We like what they’re doing.” So, we turn that into “Pledge here to be a part of the making of our new record. From Day 1, you get access to our ‘Pledges Only’ page. These are exclusive to our pledges, and they give you access to rough mixes, live tracks, demos, video blogs, Ustream concerts, and all this stuff available to you. And once we hit the target, 10% of all the profits from that campaign go to the charity of our choice. Pledge now to get involved, and it will be an amazing time for all of us.” And the updates section and pledges on the updates is really the key driver here. It’s an exclusive part of the site that has a very low barrier to entry. One of the things we didn’t want to do is drop the price too much, because a lot of times people will say, “$10 is a lot of money for an EP.” My point is, “Who’s selling an EP? You’re selling 30, 60 or 90 days of experiences via the updates.” If they are not worth $10, our philosophy is not matching. Five dollars will be way too little to put in. What we’ll see is that people will come in for the minimum, see five pledges on the updates, and see a Ustream concert and say, “I have to put more money in. I have to put $50 or $60 in.” And also, we release a lot more updates as the campaign is rolling along. So let’s say the artist does very well with a certain number of house concerts, then we can release more house concerts. It’s basically a platform that is not bound to a set of structured models. Another founding principle of the company is, “We’re not beholden to what was.” So, we can basically move very fluidly across the music business landscape. And that’s how we’ve been able to work with artists that are signed to major labels, independents and across the board.
Can you part with ballpark numbers? How much money have you raised for artists and charities at this point?
BR:
To be honest, we haven’t really counted it. And I haven’t tallied up because we’re going to do an end or year thing. Our average front line, major artist campaign hits anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. We do a lot of campaigns in the $7,000 range. The biggest numbers one we did was $75,000 from 633 fans. That was pretty impressive. The fans wanted to give more, but the artist didn’t want to change the campaign once it was in place, so we left it as it was. Just speaking to your previous question too, anyone can sign up on the site, and we will help them through the process. But we also meet with managers, agents, lawyers, producers and studio owners all the time and listen to what it is they want from this process.
A lot of times a manager isn’t going to go to the website, sign up and create a campaign. That just isn’t going to work for them. So we collect their information and say we’ll submit all the information and create the campaign for them to edit in the background. The system is designed to scale to what’s required, but at the moment we seem to be hitting a phenomenal level of talent. We’ve had people signed to everyone from Cherry Lane to Warner Publishing and a lot of labels are approaching us and telling us what sounds good, because it’s the real deal and a real campaign. It shouldn’t ever be seen as a poor man’s record deal. What it should be seen as by artists is, “This is the most exciting, compelling and amazing way for me as an artist to get my music to you, my fans and friends. And I’m going to give you the greatest experience of your life for a minimum of $10 or a maximum of whatever it is you want to put in. The key is that this experience and journey is something we’re going on together. A lot of times managers will say, “I’m worried about providing that much content.” And what we say to them is, “You spend a day with the band, you can record a bunch of pledges only content, and you can set it in the system when it gets sent to the fans.” It doesn’t have to be a lot of downloading and uploading. It’s just running in the background. And what we find is that nine times out of ten, once it begins, the bands really start to have fun with it. They start to make crazy videos, and they have a live, real-time, engaged audience participating. And that’s when it really starts to get exciting.
Have you ever done pledges not driven around the creation of recorded music?
BR:
We’ve done a lot of them. A lot of times an act will come to us and has just finished the record, have gone into massive amounts of debt and don’t have the money to market it. When I first started the company, I met with the directors and said, “Guys, there are thousands and thousands of people that have 850 CDs sitting in their apartments right now because they spent all their money on making them and have no way to actually go and sell them.” Part of what it was designed to do is to say, “Pledge here and be part of helping my CD get out of the can and into the wide world.” And then you would hire a PR person to do a campaign with you. What we’re looking to do is to do campaigns with people like that. We have a partnership thing with Planetary where they will give you a discount on a radio campaign because we can bring a lot of bands to them, and they can do us the favor of giving our artists a deal. It’s about bringing the cost to the artist down as much as we possibly can as a company.
We also do campaigns for tours. We say, “Participate in our tour, and we’ll bring you back a live recording from South by Southwest” or something similar.
What kind of fan base is required to do a successful pledge campaign in your estimation? Because, clearly, we speak about polarizing the fans and having a fan club-esque experience or something that is proprietary to only the people willing to invest upfront. How many fans does someone have to have to make this work? Is there a minimum?
BR:
There isn’t a minimum. And one of the things that has been remarkable is that an A&R friend said to me, “I have an artist I work with, and you have to check her out.” And I checked her out, and she was phenomenal. And I wanted to make it work. So, I asked the artist, “How many e-mail addresses do you have?” And she said, “I have 150 gmail contacts.” And I thought, “Oh boy.” I talked to her and wrote a blog about it that was entitled, “If you want to make music, you have to tell people about it.”
What I said to her was basically, “Tonight at the show, pass a mailing list down from the stage.” And she went from having a mailing list of 150 to 197 in one night. Then, a few weeks later, we were tallying up data capture – because we offer free data capture to our artists – she was able to raise enough money to mix, master and manufacture her CD in about three weeks. It really comes down to how much work you’re willing to do, and if you’re going to give even a few fans an experience.
There’s also the X-Factor of will people respond to your music or what you have out there?
BR:
Yes, there is that. The artist I just mentioned was one of those rare artists that I sent a link out to all my friends saying, “You have to check this out. This is incredible,” and all of a sudden they said it was amazing and that they were pledging. It really depends. I’ve also seen artists with 900 fans raise $24,000. Actually I lost a bet on that one. We ended up giving some more money to charity.
But really, you don’t need hundreds of thousands of fans. You just need to engage with the fans you have. The most important thing for an artist to get into their heads is to stop selling their fans ordinary things. Stop selling them stuff to buy and start offering them experiences. Offer them a way to be a part of what it is that makes you a musician.
It may feel a little weird at first, but I’m bombarded by “Come to my show, buy my CD,” or “Come to my show, buy my bundle with a T-shirt.” And I don’t care anymore, because it’s too much. It’s overwhelming. Whereas, if I see on my Facebook wall, “Here’s an undiscovered track for my pledges only,” I want to check that out. I’m curious, and when it happens again, I’m curious. To play along those lines, what we did is that if you do a pledges only update as an artist, it automatically feeds to your Facebook, your MySpace and your Twitter. If I’m a fan and I pledge, I can set it so that every time you update your pledges only section, it goes on my Facebook, my Twitter and my MySpace. So my friends can see that I’m watching the unreleased song by a certain person, and they have to pledge to get in. Because of the way friend groups work, they get involved, and that’s how you get more people involved with what you’re doing. The other thing we found is that because the pledge campaigns are very personal, the personality of a lot of artists really shines. Some are shy, and that’s when you write a different kind of campaign built around exclusive tracks or handwritten lyric sheets or art pieces. If they’re extroverts though, that wins a lot of people over that might be skeptical. Couple that with amazing music, and you really can’t lose.
I haven’t taken any artists through a pledge campaign, although I’m thinking of submitting a few to you. But I do often tell people that they have to provide their audience with some sustainable and constantly updatable feed of news/entertainment about themselves or their lives to maintain people’s interest. And I think that’s what you’ve hit upon. You’re creating a stream of content or the experiential product that flows over the course of a recording or a tour.
BR:
Absolutely. The other thing a lot of people will say is, “Why don’t I just do an online fan club?” What happens with those online fan clubs, which roll out through the year is they’re incredibly difficult to maintain interest in. There’s no focus to it and no locus on which it revolves.
There’s no urgency…
BR:
Exactly. I see pledges as a three-month fan club. “For three months we’re going to give you the most incredible ride of your life.” And then you go and make a record and do other things, and then you come back with another one. And we’re in our first year, so we’re having our second, third and fourth bands come back right now. The fans are just loving it and eating it up. The bands we have worked with have grown their fan bases. I think it’s really cool. The other thing with the fan club aspect of it that we’ve seen that’s been really interesting is that we don’t display how much money the artists are trying to raise, so on a fan funding site, it’s all about, “We’re looking for $10,000. So, give us your money now, and we’ll make this album.” It’s a big presale in one sense. We don’t show the target amount. So we say, “Pledge to be a part, and once we hit the target …” What’s been phenomenal is that since we’ve began only three people have emailed to ask what that target amount is. Most don’t seem to care. It’s really irrelevant to them, because the campaign is what they’re buying into. And that’s been a real eye opener. The other thing we found is that we offered the ability to show the target amount, and artists that show the target amount tend to get 20% less. So, pledges give 20% less if the target amount is displayed, which is very interesting.
So you came from management DNA (Benji’s parents were managers), you were in a band that signed a few indie deals and now you have started Pledge Music. You are in a pretty unique situation to offer advice to aspiring artists with that varied experience. I was wondering if you had advice for artists in general?
BR:
Absolutely. For one, I’m always cautious of is any service that you pay that purports to get you above and beyond where you are. I fell for so many of those things and I tried everything. All the partners we have on our site, I’ve tried them, or know someone who has tried them. The thing I would say to most artists is that if you don’t have an e-mail list, you aren’t going to be able to tell people about what it is you’re doing. And no one else can tell people that way you can.
It’s a staggering thing, but we had an artist that raised $98,000 from 1300 fans on our site. She released the record to the public two weeks after she released it to the pledges. So basically, the pledges got it, and then two weeks later it showed up in stores. It was projected to sell 5,000-7,000 copies, the reason being that it was a bizarre record. It was a soundtrack and not necessarily a “real” release. Those pledges spoke so loudly and so highly about how much they loved it that 22,000 people bought it with minimal promotion. What that really shows is that you don’t need hundreds of thousands of fans to get the message out; you need great material and to give fans the ability to share, not just what you’re selling them, but what you’re doing and who you are. That’s what people really buy into and want to be a part of.
So many artists sit there and say, “This is such a huge amount of work.” And what I say is, “I launched my own pledge for my band Marwood and I was able to raise $6,200 in six days to record the album. I went and recorded the album and released it about a month later while starting this company.” It can be done, and I know it can be done, because I’ve done it and watched hundreds of other people do it as well. What they have to realize is that if you raise $1,000 or $100,000 on pledge, it’s a) money that wasn’t there in the first place and b) this idea that a record label is going to come and scoop you up and make it all better just doesn’t happen. It’s not part of the mix anymore. As sales decline, what you have to realize is that trying to sell CDs to people that don’t own CD players is kind of insane. There’s no way around that. When we work with labels, we look at them and are dealing with the old school at some points. What I will say is that there are some incredible labels out there, and they look to us and say, “Who looks good?”
I’ll tell you a very funny story. I was on the phone with one of my very good friends who is a concert promoter and was talking about doing deals with an artist and some corporate sponsor. A manager of a big artist said to my friend, “Well, we don’t know. We really have to check with the label, because they really have a lot of influence.” And he said, “Wait. You sold 20,000 records? I’m offering you $20,000 right now. How important can they be?” When he put it in that context it was really eye opening.
BR:
Speaking to that too, we actually started a label and a publishing company just recently. We’re about to start rolling that out. In the time when labels aren’t making sense, it was a big question as to why we would start a label. And the answer I have is that it’s because I really believe in my heart that for the artists I know we can work with, we can do well for them, because we’re going to give them an incredibly fair deal, and my job is to put as much money into their hands as I possibly can as quickly as possible.
This means I can’t strangle them for merch and can’t put them on a 360 deal, but what I can do is give them a way to get to that next level, whether it’s with our label or another label. You have to go in with a base of something., Otherwise, there are a million people with their hands out. And labels are in a position where they have declining sales, so why would they sign you? It’s a tough call.
Learn more about Pledge Music and check out Benji’s band Marwood.
Dane Venable is the head of marketing for Atlantic records. In addition to overseeing several product managers Dane still handles his own roster of acts that he does marketing for personally including James Blunt, Death Cab for Cutie, Jason Mraz, Rob Thomas and Matchbox 20 and a new artist named Robert Francis. I worked with Dane when I was at Elektra and he was kind enough to give me his time and insight on what music marketing looks like today.
Tell me in your words what you see marketing a band at that job entailing for you. Marketing is a broad term, so how do you see your job or your role in marketing a band? What does that look like for you?
DV:
Providing a consistent direction for the artist with the ultimate ability of cutting through the clutter.
Let’s talk about the clutter. When you’re first sizing up a project obviously there’s going to be a lot of creativity involved, but is there a strategy to make a band stand out among all the thousands and thousands of bands out there? Have most of the bands that come to you already identified a niche to market to, or is that something that you try to identify/try to connect them to?
DV:
It always differs with the artist. Some artists come in with a very strong vision of who they are, where they want to go, because some bands have already been out there building touring bases. And by that I don’t mean, “Oh yeah, we played the past six months once every two weeks in Pittsburgh.” The Zac Brown band is a perfect example. He’s been out there ten years throughout the Southeast building a club base.
So funny, yet another time I thought that was an overnight success that turned out to be years and years of hard work
DV:
He’s been doing 150 shows a year for ten years; that guy knows exactly who he is, he knows exactly where he wants his career to go. Sometimes you get a group that is just out of art school and has been practicing in basements and just kind of putting together their music. They may have general ideas, but they need it fully fleshed out, and that’s where we try to help them, because the days are long gone of trying to hang an image on an artist and then make it work. Even though a lot changes year to year with the amount of clutter and noise that’s out there, one thing that’s gotten even stronger is a band’s sense of credibility and what that means in the world.
I think the smell test with audiences is stronger than ever. If you take a look at some of the most trafficked and active websites, they are websites that really do have artist involvement if not complete artist control. Kids go to those sites and know that it is the artist’s voice. It’s not somebody in management, it’s not some uber fan that’s just putting stuff up. That credibility I think really matters for a lot of bands. Look, if you’re an artist that writes big pop smashes or big hip hop smashes and you want to go directly to radio, that’s one route you can take it certainly; that’s always been there. But a lot of the bands we deal with are not looking to go directly there, not that they don’t believe in their songs in the same way, but they want to build their audience, they want to have a sense of discovery before they get to just be known for a song. And so in that way, credibility really matters, the way you approach things matter.
And by the way, when I say credibility, it matters on the other side too. I just got done having this conversation the other day. We want artists to be active with their fans. It’s crucial today. However, it has to be sincere and feel natural. To have an artist on Twitter where it’s not a natural fit and they’re doing it because they think they need to is a horrible idea because it’s not going to come across as sincere or compelling. What we try to do is say, “Let’s choose a medium you are comfortable with.” With some artists it’s writing words, with some artists it’s using video cameras, with other artists they love Twitter, it’s made for them – little short blasts of stream of consciousness. But what we try to encourage is just interaction with the fans in some way that feels completely natural and we completely respect and work with artists that also want to keep some sense of mystery. Maybe there’s an artist that doesn’t feel natural talking about what they’re doing every minute of the day.
How do you compensate for someone who isn’t communicating in these ways because clearly when that is working for somebody it’s a very powerful tool.
DV:
Twitter works amazing for Jazon Mraz. He’s got 350,000 followers but that doesn’t mean Twitter is going to work for a different artist. Why would it? It’s hard to look at a Chad Kroeger Nickelback song and say that doesn’t work, because they are all big hits. But you wouldn’t say, so why wouldn’t my artist just follow that formula?
Well of course, but what are things you do when a band wants to retain its anonymity in some kind of way? How do you end up compensating most often? Do you just look for other ways of connecting through different mediums?
DV: Well, that kind of depends. I like to think in a lot of ways artists whether as diverse as Bjork, Sigur Ros, Tool, even Radiohead, all like to keep their anonymity in some way, shape or form. But all of them have some creative ways of connecting to their fans. With Bjork, it’s usually in art. She does five or six videos per project, or every design she puts out is something that really speaks to who she is as an artist. With Trent Reznor it’s really about just his timing and the inventive way he connects with his fans.
You were talking earlier about bands that were fresh out of art school vs. those that had built a following over ten years. Have you noticed over the last several years that it’s become more one than the other or is the split pretty much the same? The stuff that’s getting signed and winding up on your plate, is that stuff that tends to be more established or less established, or is it the same old 50/50?
DV: Really I wish I could say it’s changed appreciably, but really I think it ultimately comes down to someone’s belief in a song or in a group of songs. As much as in the marketing template or the “Marketing 101” book, I would love to have bands who have had experience touring or have been out there for a while building a fan base or through one or 2 indie releases – that’s the dream come true – so you don’t have to completely start from scratch. But a lot of times an A&R person just hears the song, hears a demo, sees a show and that overtakes everything. It overtakes every other factor. And that happens time and time again, and that’s not a bad thing, because if our company got to a place where we said, “OK, we’re doing 360’s, therefore touring is a huge factor for us so we only want bands that have begun to build a touring base,” that’s kind of dangerous because then it probably means the nature of the songs or the nature of the music is down in the mix, even just a little bit. The music and the song always have to be first.
It’s good to hear you say that, because it can appear sometimes on the outside like it’s something different. Let’s talk about if you’re starting out with somebody brand new. What are some of the low- or no-cost marketing techniques that you consider a must for every band that wants to get noticed?
DV: Building and maintaining your own Web site. And trying to actually market yourselves and build it to a point where, when anyone goes on it, whether it’s somebody from a label, an attorney, another musician, it actually feels like it’s active. It actually feels like you’ve done some work and you’re not just sitting in your bedroom creating these great demos but you don’t have really any motivation to take your music outside your own bedroom.
Along those lines, do you guys spend a lot of time on SEO or is that just not really in the per view for what you guys do?
DV:
We have someone over at Warner Music Group who actually specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and online advertising. He can flip your head back and forth with the amount of research he’s done on it and how you can target advertising to a project. Almost all of our online advertising now is done this way. We rarely just do banners for static placement at this site or that site. The advances in technology and actually trying to be able to reach exactly where you want to reach are like a dream come true.
How are those keywords then determined? It must be kind of hard when you have a middle of the road rock band. Do you keyword tag other bands?
DV: It depends. I’ll give you an example. We have Death Cab for Cutie in the “Twilight: New Moon film.” There’s a person upstairs that comes up with 50-100 word associations that we register and when those hit, “Boom.” You have to just envision yourself and what you do and how you search Google. If you put it in your mindset, it’s not that hard. It’s not like a science. How is anyone going to search: “Death Cab Twilight;” “Death Cab New Moon”? Whatever. There are a thousand different ways. Are you going to get them all? No. But the odds of actually reaching your target as opposed to just reaching all these eyeballs that have zero interest in what you do are light years ahead. It’s completely changed. Print ads are rare, few and far between with the exception of Alternative Press.
Are most of your marketing efforts on or offline at this point?
DV: It depends what you mean, but they all have to start online. Online is where everything starts, it is Ground Zero. Atlantic was the first major label to garner over 50% of our annual revenue from digital sources. That’s a huge accomplishment. If you think that the physical market still takes up 75% of people’s purchases, and 50% of our revenue in the last year came from digital sources – meaning ring tones and digital sales – it’s a really big accomplishment. What that says is that everything we do has to start with some digital structure. That’s where everyone is. That’s where everyone’s living and breathing. So that takes up a lot of our time, especially for developing artists. Certainly then you go to traditional methods depending on your timing. If it’s an established artist, you go a lot quicker. And by traditional I mean, you go to radio and traditional press and there’s touring and tour marketing and hand-to-hand combat out there.
Speaking of traditional, there really aren’t many record stores anymore… Has anything really replaced a band playing in local record stores before a tour date? Where are you guys going when you have a band on the road?
DV: Web chat is the new in-store. You get to see your artists, you get to see them talk, and if we’re doing it right there’s a pre-order or an order right there, and somebody orders their music. Secondly, though if you’re still talking about things that are done more traditionally is that any developing artist that we have, they are out there at the merch booths immediately after their shows signing, meeting, kissing babies, taking e-mail addresses.
Tell me more about Web chat. Do you guys have your own proprietary software for that or are you using something?
DV: There are various methods we can use. One of the ones we’re doing right now on a consistent basis is this guy Jason Castro, and he was in the fourth season of American Idol – he’s the guy with the dreads – and we’re making a debut album with him right now. His first single just came out. Because of his notoriety that stayed around his fan base is exceedingly strong and has remained so. Throughout the process of this album we have bi-weekly Web chats with him. It’s almost like “Date Night.” He goes on camera for an hour and answers live-time questions from his fans. It works, it keeps people connected and it keeps people coming back. The last chat we had we were shut out of three rooms. Three rooms were completely full and we don’t know how many people were waiting. Each one of our rooms would hold a maximum of 1,000 people. I have no idea how many people were trying to get on there, but 3,000 were there.
Anything else you can think of as advice for things that make your job easier when somebody shows up at your door?
DV: An artist that actually wants to work and realizes that they are part of their career.
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Please check out the new artist that Dane is working with Robert Francis.
Ready, Fire – Aim!
I have worked with about a dozen artists over the last year more than just coaching them but doing the heavy lifting – product managing and marketing the release of recorded music and tours. What never ceases to amaze me is the myriad of things that many artists only remember about marketing and promotion after they have released an album. I realize there is less set up time required in the high paced digital world we live in but let’s not forget that there is in fact a need to have some setup before a release date so as not to be completely unprepared.
These are ideas that should be thought about before you have even entered the studio because what you capture about the process of making the record will serve you in the process of the set up and release of the record. One of the most important and noteworthy things a musician can do from a marketing and press standpoint is to release new material. This is one of the reasons many people advocate releasing singles or EPs vs. LPs. I’m an EP man myself – a single just feels too easy to divorce from the message and image of an artist as a whole but that’s probably a topic for another blog post at another time.
Try these:
1) Have a plan. Any plan is better than no plan. Start this plan the same day you say to yourself – “it’s time to go into the studio”. Physically write out this plan and make yourself a sketch of the next 3-6 months both during the making of and after the completion of the record. It had better be more than – “Let’s put it on Myspace!”. As hard as it is to not share your new creation with the world – hold off until you have a rollout strategy in place so you can maximize the impact of your new release.
2) Document the process of creation. Write about it (and I mean keep a full journal), take photos of it, take videos of you in the studio if you are lucky enough to have guests on your record that have a larger profile than you ask permission to get photos and video of them with you. Collect a few rough mixes and make sure you have instrumentals and TV tracks mastered for possible placements at a later date. Be sparing with what you release to your fan base during the creation phase – it may make sense to survey all this “making of” content so you can edit and meter it out in a way that keeps people talking about you and your new music that’s coming out.
3) Once the album and B-Roll footage are all assembled and edited – divide these items up into what is for sale and what is for promotional use and start thinking about where and when to place the promotional pieces leading up to release.
4) Speaking of where – get the url for your project name at myspace, facebook, twitter, youtube, flickr, ustream and sign up for a tubemogul account. Toy with synching these services together using artist data, ping.fm or other one off synching applications (Selective tweets, myspace-twitter, twitter-lnkedin etc). If you’re going to be in a learning curve or don’t have these items established do it with your catalog albums and merch – not the new stuff.
5) Like Physical CDs? No judgments here. They sure are easier to sign than digital downloads. Have them in hand a few months before the release date – some gatekeepers still like getting CDs in their hands.
I’ll be back soon with part 2 but consider items 1-5 as prerequisites to have checked off of your list before release. Above all – be patient!
-R-
