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Noah Dinkin is the Co-Founder of FanBridge – a fan list management service that is geared towards musicians.  He was kind enough to sit down with me and tell me about his company, how it was founded and offer general advice about email marketing for artists.

Musician Coaching:

Thanks for taking the time Noah, tell me a bit about how and why you started FanBridge.

ND:

FanBridge was Co-Founded by myself and my friend Spencer Richardson a few years ago.  We were looking for a fun project to work on in our spare time outside of day jobs, and after seeing the music industry going through a lot of chaos, we knew that chaos usually creates opportunity, so we started looking at what we could do in music space.  After looking at a bunch of things and talking with various people, we came to focus on the artist-fan relationship.  When you think about it, this relationship is the single most important piece of the music business, and for too long it has been paid lip service and overlooked.  At the time we couldn’t find anyone really focused on enabling a direct relationship between the artist and their fans, so this looked like a good opportunity for us to jump in and really help out.

Version one was very simple email list management for bands.  You could add people, geo-target, and schedule/send your emails…not much else. It was also really ugly.  Even with all of that, bands started signing up, and other bands started seeing those bands using it, and the snowball started rolling downhill.  A year later we added mobile text messaging (since this was when everyone went “you’re an idiot if you don’t have a mobile fan club”), and we have always continued to update the platform based on feedback (most recently adding social network features/integrations among other things).  We are huge believers in always getting feedback and bringing it in to every part of the company, and I think that is one of the reasons that we’ve been so successful without spending the ton of money other people have spent trying to marketing their products.  We just focus on what people need (based on feedback), build it really well, and make it easy to use.  Today both Spencer and I do FanBridge full-time (24/7/365) alongside an awesome rockstar team of people who are just as passionate about what we’re doing as we are.

Musician Coaching:

What are some of the advantages of using an email marketing service Vs. using outlook or one of the social networks to market to your fan base?

ND:

When we originally started, the question we got most often from musicians was “I have 2 million friends on myspace, what do I need an email list for?” While education of musicians has come a long way, we still get asked that question today.  While email is one (important) thing we do, I would consider FanBridge more of a “fan relationship manager,” than just an “email marketing service” so I’m going to compare a fan relationship manager to outlook/social networks/etc.

The advantages of using a platform/service to help manage and communicate with your fans are many.  First and foremost, a service like us is 100% laser focused on this area.  Outlook is a general email client used by anyone and everyone, and serves the mass market, whereas FanBridge is focused on musicians.  Every feature we make is with your exact use case in mind. A great example of this is our feature to target by zip code and radius for shows.  For example, before FanBridge, most people who were savvy would have their list in outlook (or gmail/hotmail/etc) separated into groups, usually by state.  Now that’s okay (not great) for tiny states, but for bigger states like California, Florida, New York, Texas, and so on, it doesn’t really work, because people in Buffalo don’t really care that you are playing Manhattan (even though they are both in the same state).  With our geo-targeting feature, you can just put in the zip code of the venue where you are playing, and say “I only want to message fans within 60 miles of the show” and our system will automatically compute who the message should go to (so people in Buffalo aren’t bothered with a message about your show in Manhattan, but it isn’t relevant to them). In addition, from just a technical standpoint, we do a lot of things behind the scenes to make sure your messages to fans arrive (in the inbox) and looking good.  Outlook doesn’t do that, and it can actually be really bad for sending to large numbers of people. In addition, when emails bounce, we automatically remove them, whereas in Outlook, you would have to do that by hand (and if you didn’t do that, your deliverability will decrease for future messages you send).  These are just a few surface level reasons why using a dedicated platform like FanBridge is much better than a generic service.

Regarding social networks, they are great because there is a lot of activity and users check out all kinds of new things on these sites.  We encourage our clients to use social networks to have a presence in these high traffic places on the web, but to make sure to get fans to signup to a dedicated fan list where the artist gets the fan’s real info (things like email, location, etc).  Sure, you can build a ton of friends/fans/followers on the social networks, but knowing that ‘babygirl234’ is your friend doesn’t tell you much or give you much value in your marketing efforts.

When you have your own list outside of the social networks, you can use that fan list to build a relationship with the fan.  You might actually message the fan both through email and social networks, but they key is to own your own list because it gives you the flexibility to do what you want, as well as do more advanced targeted marketing.  Owning your own list also gives you security in case the social network goes out of business, because you can take your own list anywhere you want, whereas you can’t easily port your myspace friends to twitter followers.

Musician Coaching:

Have you seen your clients change the way or the frequency they communicate with their fans based on the feedback and analytics you provide?

ND:

We definitely have seen people make adjustments based on the feedback and analytics our platform provides.  It is actually very eye opening for a lot of musicians to see how many people are opening or clicking various things in their messages.  We try and give clients feedback wherever we can, and one example of this is we tell people who used to cram a ton of info into a monthly newsletter to break it down into 2 (or more) shorter messages with a focus on one or two calls-to-action in each.  When you tell fans to do 10+ things, they usually do none. But if you tell them to do one or two, you have a very good chance they will do them.  Overall though, there are a lot of bad habits and misconceptions when it comes to communicating with fans, and we are always working to use data to show artists how they can improve to make their messages more effective.

Musician Coaching:

Many of my clients are bewildered about what to write about when keeping in touch with their fanbase other than we have a show coming up.  What have you seen work for your clients in terms of subjects to speak about or things to offer their fanbase to add value (free mp3s / show tickets / contests etc)

ND:

This is a huge issue, and touches on some of what I mentioned in the last question.  People (musicians especially) often feel like they are bothering fans when they send them a message, and therefore they only want to send a message when they have a new album or tour (which usually ends up being about twice a year).  I can’t say this enough, but YOU CAN’T BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE IF YOU DON’T TALK TO THEM.  How many best friends do you have that you talk to only twice a year?  Probably none. You need to communicate often with your fans, and twitter is actually a great tool to use daily in conjunction with email (which can be used weekly or bi-weekly).  In terms of what to talk about, we really believe it can be anything…what movies you’ve seen recently, what music you’ve been liking (or not liking), what songs you’ve been working on, and so on in addition to news about your music.  The people on your list are fans, and they want to consume as much information about you as possible, so why not give it to them?

For things to offer, you should always offer a free mp3 to get people to sign up to your list (we have a feature that does this automatically called Fan Incentive), and if people want to help out even more (in terms of street teams, or pre-ordering tickets, or collecting emails for you at shows), give them something that is unique.  Maybe a personalized voicemail message, or a shoutout on your twitter/facebook.  The people who want to help are (or are going to become) your super fans, so you want to do anything you can to keep them loving you so they tell all their friends about you.

Musician Coaching:

What are some of the most inventive marketing ideas or campaigns you have seen by your clients to expand their mailing list?

I’ve seen bands offer some very creative incentives to get fans to sign up to their list at shows.  Everything from a free ride to the next city on the tour (in the van of course) to a chance to win a living room show in the fan’s house.  I would actually say a cool idea is ask your existing fans to come up with ideas for what you can offer fans to join your list..I’m sure they will come up with some good ones!

Musician Coaching:

Any practices you would recommend against using email marketing?

ND:

Here are two (that are hopefully obvious): don’t add people to your list if they don’t want to be added (or don’t know they are being added), and don’t let your list sit for a while without communicating regularly (you will lose a lot of fans this way).

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Thanks to Noah and if this information or this service sounds helpful please visit FanBridge. FanBridge also provides a 5 reasons why you need FanBridge page that is worth checking out.

Patrick Faucher is the CEO and Co-Founder, Nimbit, Inc. by way of being a technologist and life long musician.  He is a Berklee College of Music Graduate and one of the founders of direct to fan platform called Nimbit.  He was kind enough to take some time and explain to me how Nimbit works and offer some general advice and information on how people are making a living in music using the direct to fan approach.

Musician Coaching:

Tell me a bit about your background and how Nimbit came to be.

PF:

I’ve been a musician my whole life, since age four. I went through high school, and out of high school got a scholarship to engineering school, which was very practical at the time. I studied computer science and electrical engineering back in the early days of the Commodore 64.

Musician Coaching:

I had a VIC-20. I was right there with you.

PF: There you go! I had a VIC-20. I loved that thing. Three years into engineering school, I took a break to go and play music, because that’s always been my passion and my love. I did that for a year and decided the last place I wanted to go was back to engineering school. So, I took some time and applied to music schools and in 1990 I ended up getting a scholarship to Berklee College of Music here in Boston. After graduation I gigged as a professional musician – various groups, from reggae, to blues, to jazz, to world music, to you-name-it. After getting married I realized how unbelievably difficult it was to make a living as an artist and support a family.  So I fell back on my technical background and started doing web programming.  At the time the web was just starting to be commercialized. I ended up working for a firm called Stumpworld Systems that created some of the very first e-commerce applications for bands including Phish, Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones.

Musician Coaching:

Hmmm.   The Rolling…?  Oh yea – those guys.  Ok.

PF:

We developed an entire suite of e-commerce and storefront tools that powered different sites. We had a bunch of clients – not just musicians. And we ended up building out this whole e-commerce platform.  That company rode the boom-bust cycle through the late 90’s into 2001. I was employee number 16 when I got hired as  head of development, and two years later we had 180 employees!  Six months after that we were closed.

Musician Coaching:

I don’t mean to laugh, but I’ve worked at and seen so many companies like that myself.

PF:

Right. You’ve seen that play. It was a great ride, and we built some great technology. When the dust settled, I got together with Matt Silbert, a Stumpworld colleague.  He said, “Hey, I want to get back to serving the musicians we worked with early on and open up a web shop.” I said, “There’s one question that drives me nuts. Why doesn’t every band get online and build a business directly with their fans? There’s no reason they can’t other than the tools are clunky, it’s hard to navigate, and there just isn’t a good platform for it.”  That was around 2002 when I started to write the business plan for Nimbit.  After that we launched the very first version of Nimbit Web Tools that let you publish and manage a website, run a mailing list, post a calendar, and update your website.

We were developing the storefront piece to go out, and I met up with Phil Antoniades who ran Artist Development Associates.  He already had a whole online CD store for artists including a fulfillment solution we needed.  We started talking, and he had a whole pile of offline services he was doing for musicians from promotion, to CD replication, to other management type services.

We merged the two companies and created an online artist development platform where artists could put themselves online, get their brand out there, engage their fans, and conduct commerce all in one spot. That was the vision for Nimbit from the get-go:  artists need a way to directly engage their fan base, sell direct to them, market to them on an on-going basis, and manage their business.   The traditional major label distribution model was rendering itself unnecessary and costly, and we saw then that the market wouldn’t sustain multiple, multi-platinum releases for much longer.

The playing field between “major label” and “indie” was leveling.  The lowered barriers to entry certainly meant that a lot more artists could get in the game, and it was a lot more distracting for Joe Fan.  But we knew the good artists could easily connect with those fans and start building a business directly with them. And we saw that as the model of the future, so that’s when we set out to build the ultimate platform for direct-to-fan marketing, sales and distribution.

Musician Coaching:

So how long has there been a Nimbit in this current incarnation? How long have you been open with this suite of tools?

PF:

Over five years.

Musician Coaching:

And how many users do you have currently?

PF:

We have over 15,000 artists on our system.

Musician Coaching:

How are you differentiating yourself from the handful of other companies – Topspin, ReverbNation? You’ve been around for a while, but I’m hearing more about you lately.

PF:

Nimbit has been built from the bottom up.  From the beginning it was designed to be a fully-integrated direct-to-fan business management platform. We didn’t start out being a widget company a hybrid portal, where it’s fan discovery plus some widgets plus some fan marketing. We didn’t start out to be a CD manufacturer or an online CD store. We didn’t start out to be just high-end merchandising or analytics. That’s part of the reason it’s taken so long for our brand to take hold:  it’s a lot easier to sell a single-point solution like a fan widget or an e-mail marketing tool than it is to sell an integrated platform. What’s been our weakness historically is now our strength. We very methodically set out to build everything from the back office, forward. Not only are artists able to publish beautiful storefronts but they’re able to capture all that fan data, analyze it, drill down, create marketing programs for that fan base and then push out those marketing programs that then drive more sales.

We were the first to actually publish a complete digital and physical integrated shopping cart. We’ve been doing this for years, where you can publish CD’s, t-shirts, mp3’s, digital albums, PDF’s – you name it. Any kind of product, digital or physical, you can actually merchandise and market through your store, and the fan doesn’t have to go three different places to get it.

We’ve remained focused on how artists conduct their business behind those storefronts. It’s things like giving them lots of different ways to set up their products, making sure everything is handled from Soundscan, to royalty tracking, to revenue splits with the other stakes holders. It’s complete transparency, so the artist sees where each sale comes from, what channel, etc.  Nimbit also gives them conduits to iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody and eMusic as well as publishing their own storefronts, because that’s part of their business as well. It’s things like giving them a central place to work with their customer list and fan list, and to see all their activity data. They can see things like total sales on a per-customer basis.

Our core philosophy from the get-go was to build our solution around the artist such that they could really conduct, build, and operate a successful business. We couldn’t do that by giving them just one part of a solution or one little widget to do e-mail. We couldn’t do that by giving them one little widget to sell an mp3. And we couldn’t do that without giving them things like warehousing and fulfillment and inventory management, which is something you won’t get with others.

Nimbit didn’t do it the easy way. And it was tough to really make the business fly, because you had to coordinate multiple moving parts.  It was very expensive to operate, and required a critical mass to sustain it.

Musician Coaching:

Do you have any success stories with somebody using your platform exclusively?

PF:

Absolutely. We see it every day.  We have hundreds and hundreds of people really making a living.  We have a children’s artist that makes well over six figures per year,  using Nimbit to run  sales, marketing and distribution.

Another perfect example is an artist named Ellis Paul who’s been a long-time indie staple in the folk and Americana space. He started out with a label and now uses us exclusively. In this past year he raised nearly $100,000 using our platform, directly with his fans to fund his new album.

Musician Coaching:

You have a fundraising aspect as well?

PF:

Yes, it’s actually as simple as creating any other product offer on our system. Ellis set up a bunch of really cool donation bundles, ranging from $50 up to $5,000 and $10,000. People could support him at these different levels, and he did this all through his website, mailing list and at his store. He got a $10,000 offer within half an hour of putting out his first e-mail. He sent this patron down to Nashville where she could sit in for the recording of some of the songs, and she actually played on some of the songs. She said that in retrospect that was the best $10,000 she ever spent. He calls it fan-raising instead of fundraising.

He used that money to produce probably his best album ever to date. And now those same fans that have supported him on the album, he’s activating them and sending concentric rings around them to go out and create buzz about the new album, which he is releasing without a label. But he is already on track to sell more than he’s ever sold in the past. In fact, we have some artists that have, since coming with us after being on a label, sold more and made more money doing it this way than all of their previous releases combined. That’s not an unusual story for us.

Musician Coaching:

How are you integrating with the people on the big social networks?

PF:

Today fans live online; and they live on MySpace and Facebook.  We announced a new product which is called MyStore for Facebook.  MyStore enables artists to sell individual songs, entire albums, physical CD’s or anything from a Facebook fan page.

The fan doesn’t have to leave Facebook which has a twofold advantage:  1) that’s where the fans want to stay because they’re talking to their friends; 2) because it’s being done there and through Nimbit, so the artist gets a bigger piece of the pie.  Because the artists know who bought what, they can say, “Hey, looks like many of our fans enjoy the up-tempo songs. We can send out a note saying, ‘We’ve got this new album featuring these up-tempo songs. And if you want to feature this song on your personal page, you can do that.’”

Essentially there is this whole generation of people – millions who are on Facebook – that live online. The key is that successful artists have been able to find fans where they are. In the past, if somebody played a stadium, the artist didn’t know who was there. The ticket company might know, but the artist didn’t know. We create ways to do that. I think what is especially exciting about the Ellis Paul example is that he raised $100,000 from 300 people. They are essentially his patrons. He compares it to when Mozart went to Emperor Josef.  Mozart had one sole patron. So now you can have individual fans who are producers and patrons, and they can be vocal about what they want. This creates a great dialogue. Mass music used to be, somebody had a song and pushes it down someone’s throat and the label makes all the money. In this case, the artist selling music themselves, the fans communicating directly with the artist,  it’s a more healthy and fulfilling relationship.

Musician Coaching:

I always compare it to Twelfth Night, because you have the character the fool who would show up for the various different people of royalty and dance and play fiddle for a coin or his supper what have you. It’s become a lot more feudal in that regard.

PF:

That’s a very good point. It has become a lot more feudal, and if you look at the economic model, it mirrors that in a way. It’s coming down into smaller enterprises and more dispersed across these fragmented, niched marketplaces. But you have this very big difference in that you’ve got a communication medium that can cover the entire globe in an instant. It’s not localized from a physical standpoint anymore. So you can have direct patronage across the globe that’s very dispersed, but it follows that similar economic model of the old patronage model.

Musician Coaching:

What about things you’ve seen completely backfire and don’t work or words of caution?

PF:

You have to have both right and left brain. You need somebody who can be a great musician and a great business person. Some musicians might fail as business people because they either don’t have those skills or don’t hire people to do it. You can be the best musician, with the greatest skills and tunes out there, but it’s the power behind the throne. As an artist, you owe it to yourself to understand and be directly involved with the business aspects of your career and understand that you are a business, and you are the CEO of your business.  You have to understand what’s going on and surround yourself with smart people. I often point to the fact that back before Madonna was a big star, she was very driven and understood the business of music. When Ray Charles was emerging as a star, he successfully negotiated to retain the rights to masters; he was the first artist ever to do that because he understood the business landscape around him.

I often hear artists say, “You know what? I just want to make the music and get a label to take care of the rest.” And I tell them, “That’s a recipe for disaster. Not that that couldn’t work out, but your approach is a recipe for disaster. You will quickly get taken advantage of and spit out and not end up where you want to be.”

There’s an interesting story that is indicative of how mindsets are changing in terms of how artists define success. For the past three or four years I have given a lecture at Berklee College of Music.  It’s generally a talk about distribution and marketing and different concepts for getting your music out to market.  I ask at every workshop I do, “How many of you want to go make a living in music after you leave Berklee?” All of them raise their hands. “How many of you see working with a label or getting a label deal as critical to doing that and making a living?”

Four years ago every person in the class raised hands. Two years ago, only half the students raised their hands. This year, I went and gave a similar workshop and asked the same question about a month and a half ago, and exactly zero people raised their hand.

None of them saw a major label as a critical component for success. I thought that was fascinating.

I thought it would be interesting to highlight the accomplishments of some of the folks who are out there hustling.  As you all know there are so many musicians out there.  How does one distinguish oneself from the masses of aspiring artists out there especially without having a great deal of disposable income?  Below are three examples from regular (albeit talented) musicians I think are doing things a bit differently and I believe it will pay off.

1) Victor Rice.

Victor Rice was the bass player for the Scofflaws and the NYC Ska Jazz Ensemble.  I was fortunate enough to study bass with victor many years ago.  Victor moved to Brazil several years ago and he has since honed his producing and mixing skills in the last few years.  I don’t know this because I have seen Victor or kept up with him (I’ve been a lousy friend) but he has been doing some video of him doing live Dub Mixes under the name Strikkly Vikkly.  In the digital age people take the skill involved in making and mixing records for granted.  I say if you’ve got the skill – show people…  Is Victor good at mixing?  See for yourself:

2) This is a ShakeDown

I saw this band at the Dewey Beach Music festival and they were quite good live.  What made a lasting impression on me though was when I came across the video below and heard how it was made.  I caught up with Brandon, the lead singer of the Cleveland based group and he explained to me that the band actually borrowed 21 MacBooks and used the program photobooth (pre-installed mac software) and captured five or six takes of the band performing their song “Circles”.  The video was shot in their rehearsal space and the editing was done by someone at their label (an independent called Reversed Image Unlimited.  Total cost to the band – 0$.  Check it out:

3) Good Night, States

Pittsburgh, PA based Good Night, States emailed me kind of out of the blue.  I try to listen to everything people send me and usually that means 1-2 songs.  An hour after having their music playing in the background I realized that I was really enjoying what I was hearing which sadly rarely happens these days.  I had the pleasure of seeing them live at CMJ and really enjoyed the show as well.  I have yet to see this device live in action but apparently the band developed and Iphone application that allows fans to plug in their Iphone to the sound system and play along with the band live.  Pretty trippy.

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More posts coming soon. Thanks as always for reading.

-R-

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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?

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.

Musician Coaching:

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.