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.
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-
When working with new clients I often tell the story of how Redbull started rolling out their product. In recent years Redbull has started doing a great deal of business to consumer outreach through advertising but it wasn’t always that way. I was once told by someone who works in marketing there that the original Redbull strategy was as simple as making sure that “cool people” i.e. actors, musicians, models had a can of Redbull in their hands as often as possible.
This meant that if you walked into a record label, high-end music management office, modeling agency, concert promoter, talent agency, PR firm or other office whose function was to support and grow celebrity of some kind you were often greeted by the tell tale mini Redbull fridge. The fridges were rare or at least rare enough that it made it seem as if those who had one had considerable influence as a purveyor of celebrity culture. I’m sure they were often fixtures in the homes and offices of celebrities as well but as someone who isn’t much of a star fucker I only have second hand information confirming this.
What was the logic in this strategy? Does it not seem that giving free product to a very small list of A-list celebrities would have backfired? It turns out that by providing free product to this community and continuing to provide it to those who seemed to have a genuine love of the product turned out rather well for Redbull- but Why?
Do you see where this is going?
Many artists and bands get stuck in the position of playing to their friends and family and struggling to grow beyond this small base.
I have seen several artists break through this very difficult phase by marketing their projects not only to people who are potential fans (Business to Consumer B2C) but to other musicians (Business to Business B2B). This may seem counter-intuitive but think about it for a second. If you sell one other artist or one other band that already draws a crowd equal to yours and they become willing to vouch for you by:
The above or ANY co-branding activity automatically suggests to another artist’s audience that you are worthy of their attention. Is this not an easier sell to a new fan than going in completely cold? I’d say so.
Hip hop has had this right for decades but even hip hop artists forget from time to time and artists of all kinds get caught up in competition and ego and all kinds of bullshit that doesn’t help their cause.
The long and the short of it is go out and make as many fans as you can and if at all possible make other artists your fans and friends as well – they can vouch for you in ways that ordinary fans can’t and such symbiotic relationships can have enormous upside for your career.
More soon,
Rick
Eric Levin is the owner and founder of the well known indie record store Criminal Records and the founder of the Alliance of Independent Media Stores (AIMS).
Eric, Thanks much for your time. Start off by telling me how you started Criminal Records.
EL:
The only work I’ve ever really done is record store work. I started out when I was 13 at a mom and pop shop in Daytona Beach, FL, where I grew up. I worked all throughout high school. When I was 19, I started my first store, partially in reaction to what I experienced at the other store. I ended up basing everything I’ve ever done on the opposite of what that guy did. I got my first store, and it was a thumbing of the nose to that cat. Pretty immediately I decided to move up to Atlanta, GA, about a year later. I had a strange occurrence while running the first record store. The first record store was called “Secret Service,” and I was actually arrested by the secret service for using the name. It was kind of an arcane, strange law that was enacted when they enacted the secret service. It wasn’t really anything anyone would know about. I did everything correctly when I opened up the store. I registered with the city and the state, and nobody knew. So, it wasn’t a heinous thing that happened. It was more of a funny thing. I got some great press, and I got the name Criminal Records out of it, so all’s well that ends well. Flash forward to 20 years later, and I’m still doing it…
How about AIMS? What is that all about?
EL:
About seven years ago I decided to start a coalition of record stores called AIMS, and I’m still the president of that organization. That’s about 25 like-minded indie retailers across the country. We sell marketing, we support each other and provide advice and opportunities. Sometimes it’s a buying group, sometimes it’s a very private blog mailing list for some specific people that happen to own record stores. Out of that group AIMS, which is the Alliance of Independent Media Stores, we started Record Store Day with CIMS and Music Monitor Network, two other coalitions. We just kind of all volunteered together, and Record Store Day was based on my experience with Comic Book Day, which is now in its seventh year. Criminal Records is also a comic shop, so that’s where I got that expertise. Record Store Day has been kind of good – pretty successful for a grassroots volunteer event.
Has there been a demonstrable renewed interest in visiting record stores from Record Store Day? Is the effect a lasting one?
EL:
Absolutely. The industry wants to call it the “Halo Effect,” or what happened after Record Store Day. But it’s pretty hard to quantify. What it has done is reinvigorated a lot of independent retailers to the potential of their businesses. I’ve heard from dozens of retailers that have e-mailed after the fact and said, “We were going to throw in the towel, but Record Store Day was so fun and positive that we’re sticking it out.” I’ve heard from a lot of people that are opening stores post Record Store Day.
I know this is going to sound like a ridiculous and obvious question, but to hear it from your vantage point as someone that was in the business twenty years ago- has your business changed? Has it gotten smaller?
EL:
I would definitely say my business has gotten bigger. We moved a year and a half ago to a store three times the size. We’re now in almost a 7,000 square foot space. Business is quite fine actually. The idea and assumption that business has gotten smaller is the reason we did Record Store Day – to do battle against that assumption. The rise of digital and the collapse of Tower Records, HMV, Circuit City. It’s hard to call the collapse of these record stores anything more than bad businesses. I have never really considered them record stores, even though they kind of were. They weren’t in the business of making money and turning people on in the sale of records. They were advertising vehicles for office staff. And those guys failed majestically. Obviously the iTunes phenomenon of the last ten years has been the crazy, sexy, cool thing, but it’s no longer that. It’s pretty ubiquitous. It’s not like that’s going to change. It will move to the cloud and be more subscriber base, but it’s still going to be zeros and ones. I’ve been in the business my entire life of selling collectible items and archival recording on master delivery disc and comic books and vinyl. These are things that are personal items. Selling them for a mild markup is a pretty solid business move. That’s really what Record Store Day was about. It was about saying, “Hey, come back in if you haven’t been back in a while,” “Come in for the first time so we can introduce you” or “Thanks for being a part of this with us.” The Sonys, the Universals, those big boys that are going to make money selling Ke$ha and Britney Spears at Wal-Mart, that’s a pretty different business from what I’m in.
Let me ask you about that actually. Being that you’re one of the few record stores in town anymore since several major chains have closed (unless you count Best Buy or Wal-Mart that really don’t have a large selection) – has that changed what you stock?
EL:
I will stock and always have everything that Atlanta wants from Criminal Records and what those customers want from Criminal Records. It’s not lacking in anything. If they wanted Britney Spears at a fair price, we’ll do our best to get it. I find that they don’t. That’s not even a commentary on Britney Spears. It’s just a commentary on mainstream vs. niche and what the modern record store thrives on . Not that Amoeba or Twist and Shout or Waterloo or Shake It can’t carry P!nk and Katy Perry. But they’re not going to move the needle for us like the new Crystal Castles or Sleigh Bells or the Black Keys or Sharon Jones. That’s where we’re always going to have a thirsty audience.
When I was coming up, the in-store was always such a popular way to move the needle for the up-and-coming band. Is that attainable anymore for an artist? Obviously you have some of those bands you mention, but those are – as far as indie bands go – bands that are established and have a touring base. From what you’ve seen, is building a relationship with your local record stores and doing in store appearances still a viable way of getting heard?
EL:
It’s essential on many levels, kind of even going back to what we were talking about with Ke$ha and P!nk. They probably don’t need to. Last year alone we had Mastodon and the Indigo Girls each release a record on the same day and had their release parties at Criminal Records.
You had a Mastodon and Indigo Girls concert on the same day? That’s fantastic. I bet that bill’s never happened again.
EL:
Probably not. And it was fantastic. It was very Atlanta and Criminal Records and very cool. It was a wonderful day. From big indie bands, to unknown indie bands to monster bands … last year at Criminal Records alone we had everybody from Those Darlings to Rodriguez, Yo La Tengo, a PitchFork of who’s who. And this is just Criminal Records. We’re very good at it. We have a full stage, full PA, lighting. We’ve made the in-store into art. It’s something we’ve done for 20 years. Our history of in-stores is really a who’s who. It’s getting to the point of all these years on, who hasn’t done an in-store at Criminal Records? And you’ll find that at places around the country – people who invest into the infrastructure to do in-stores. That doesn’t mean a band has to have a stage in a store. If you are looking for advice for artists- I’d say they should have their in-store schtick down.
What do you want to hear from an artist for an in-store? What are your criteria for selecting self released records that get stocked?
EL:
We have a very open consignment policy. No CDRs, no bullshit – it has to be a finished piece of art. Most indie record stores are like that. You should be able to consign at a local store that is probably not the type of store that will be selling your music anyway. As far as performing in the store, we get about 30 e-mails per day. We bring in product, have security, pay for the PA, have extra people. We just can’t have one every day with every single band. The band has to be committed to harness their energy and actually make something happen. That means fliers and Facebook and Myspace and their mailing list and my mailing list and everything you can do. Hitting your press contacts and having a beer sponsor, food sponsor, charity angle – anything you can do to get people off the couch. If you do it right, even our worst in-stores, the Tuesday evening in the rain band that’s never played in town will get 30 people out just because we’ve said to come out and that it would be fun. That’s 20 years later.
I don’t think every town is fortunate enough to have a spot like yours.
EL:
No, but there sure are a bunch of them. I could start with my AIMS group and go city to city. You don’t have to visit every store in every city and you don’t have to visit every city, but chances are, if you ask the venue or the club, “What do we need to do during the day? Which indie stores are cool?” it’s going to be one of those stores you’ve heard of, whether it’s a Grimey’s or a Sonic Boom or a Jackpot. There are stores like mine all across the country.
Can you give me an example from the last few years of a band that did the in-store thing really, really right, and what they did specifically?
EL:
Thinking that my store is different with its own backline and own PA, it’s a little easier. My favorites have been when an artist is just cruising around and asks if I have a stage and says, “Do you mind?” That busking tradition and the idea that the band doesn’t have to sit around the hotel room and can get out and enjoy their art is great. I love a band that can pull up with their own mini PA and bang out an acoustic set without a bunch of B.S. I think that’s smart, and every band should be playing with a mini PA so they can hit the record stores, coffee shops and the quadrangle or the radio station. I worked with one of the members of my group, Good Records in Dallas. Tim Delaughter of Polyphonic Spree co-owns Good Records. That’s a band with 28 people. We did an in-store with them for the release of their record. And this was definitely the label spending some money on record release. We had to rent a piano and a harp and do a ton to get the whole band in there. They’ve only done two in-stores – my store and Amoeba. You’ll hear that a lot. Everybody does Amoeba. I was talking to Tim as a store owner and said, “All you need is the choir and maybe an acoustic guitar player and maybe the brass. Just show up.” Work up a 25-minute set, whether it’s a-capella or acoustic or something unusual that you can bust out in the conference rooms, the radio stations, the record store. You have to have your in-store schtick. It shouldn’t be difficult and a pain in the ass on the itinerary. It should be, “Let’s do this and turn on some fans.” And this can be fans at the store level, staff, friends, the taste-makers and the customers. It’s time well spent.
Switching Gears a bit – what is the value of getting digital distribution in your indie store and other indie stores like yours? I know a lot of artists that spend a lot of money to ship 500 records. When do you think a band is ready to do that?
EL:
It’s not like it was a few years ago. If it’s a band in Seattle and they don’t have a tour or any radio or any Internet buzz, they don’t need to be in Criminal Records. I release records at Criminal records and have bands I help, and I guide them. I say, “Are you going to be in Texas? Well, then we probably don’t need to do a whole thing where we put them in a bunch of record stores down there.” But if you concentrate on the regions where they’re touring and where there’s buzz and where they’re going to be, and on areas where there is press, having records is just part of it, as much as doing radio shows and charity events. It’s an important piece. Are any of these pieces essential? Yeah. They’re all essential. Can you do it without some of them? Sure. I know that’s kind of obvious, but there are certainly a large amount of customers both pre and post record store days, but maybe even a little more now that don’t want to shop online or buy at the show. They want to support their community-based independent record store so that record store can continue to provide them with services. That used to be something we had to preach. Now people have gotten that. It’s kind of like the “Farm the Table” movement in food. It’s not for everybody, but if you can afford to eat healthy, that’s an exciting trend. If you can afford to be a patron of the arts, then come to the independent record stores.
Do you have any parting words of advice for aspiring musicians out there?
EL:
Tell musicians not to suck. We don’t need any more shitty songs.
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Learn more about Eric and Criminal by Visiting Criminal Records & AIMS
Chris MacDonald is the founder of the very popular Podcast and music discovery platform – Indie Feed. As one of the early adopters of Podcasting I wanted to talk to him about whether or not participating in services like IndieFeed were helping out aspiring artists and if so – how?
Chris, first of all thanks for your time. How did Indie Feed come about?
CM:
In 2004, when we first heard about podcasting, we had no idea what it was. I first thought it was having an antenna on top of a portable media device, and somehow that sent out signals that other people could pick up. What I learned obviously was that it’s a subscribed media service. It was downloading content into computers and into mobile media players at that point. There was no such thing as an iPhone or a lot of these smartphones. What we realized was that there would be a lot of individuals that would be keen on creating their own personal music shows. We decided it was a good idea to see what people were doing with their current consumption, which was listening to individual tracks or collections of single tracks. We reverse engineered a show that was essentially a track with a little story at the end. This idea really caught on because one of the strengths of downloadable media is that you can consume it in short form in between other things. Imagine where once you were walking down the street grabbing a coffee and then going back to your office; now you could actually consume content on an on-demand fashion. It was media where you wanted it and when you wanted it. We started a series of subscribe-able shows, each with a specific genre, and it started to get popular. It seemed the short format worked with a lot of folks. We watched a lot of these longer format shows, and people doing series of 20-30-minute, to one-hour shows. We were differentiated from the beginning. Before we knew it, we were starting to get featured on places where podcasts get consumed, and pretty soon Apple got into the game, and we bubbled up and came into consciousness. Since then we’ve branched out into other forms of consumption, such as licensed in store radio. We had the content delivered or progressively downloaded and streamed, and people can get it on our website, and any partner sites that we’ve done deals with have our content situated.
Why do you think Indie Feed got popular? I realize there weren’t a lot of players when you got involved, but what did you do to market yourselves as tastemakers?
CM:
We certainly didn’t start out thinking we were tastemakers. We were just a group of people excited about this new medium and being able to share what we thought was worth sharing. It was a means to an end. We started to realize the narrative made sense at the end of the show. This was not a personality-driven service or the Chris MacDonald show, so we tried to get out of the away and let the music speak for itself. If someone was interested, they’d stick around long enough to listen to the narrative and perhaps learn more. We learned that about 65% of our surveyed respondents said they made purchases directly related to our referrals. And 84% said they went back to the websites as recommended. So it was a pretty powerful response.
What kind of reach and listenership do you currently have?
CM:
We average 2.6 million listens per month.
How many unique sets of ears does that fall upon?
CM:
It’s difficult to measure, because the way the collection analytics work is on the IP basis. It also has to do with on what range you’re collecting. Our analytics system is collecting on a 24-hour basis. What we don’t do is parse through every 24-hour cycle and figure out which IP address goes to what. Not only is that difficult from a mathematical standpoint, but it also is difficult because IP is a good indicator of location and unique, but AOL users and university users all use the same IP address. It’s a guessing game. But what we can do is verify. We have Nielsen verifying unique listens, so they’re actually tracking on a third-party basis to ensure those are the appropriate people. Also, each feature has throughout its life cycle, depending on the genre, a range of listens. Those numbers are aggregate numbers per network, but you can slice and dice it down to each show. What we do is provide guarantees to our artists in our label relationships a certain amounts of listens per feature per genre.
Have you seen anybody harness your podcast or podcasting in general to make a dent in their marketing efforts?
CM:
We have certainly seen the needle move. For example, we did a couple tests with some artists that released their promotional track of one track to the rest of the world and then they used a control with ours. Then they started to see increased sales on the promotional track and there is no other reason to base the increased sales of that track other than back to our system. So, we’ve seen measurable sales. If the question was, “Have you seen artists actually leverage what we do for them?” Absolutely. For every single artist we send an artist fan pack. It’s the announcement of the feature and all the social components that you can utilize to share with your fans that the show occurs. We also have a press widget, and because it has the quotations it has turned into a bit of a taste-making tool. We add a quote as well and then we circulate it with our Twitter list of over of over 10,000 and our Facebook list of over 3,000. We place the quotation inside every feature these days.
I should back up – many folks might not be too familiar with how Indie Feed works. Can you take us through that?
CM:
You can get the indie feed features in a number of different ways. The largest way it’s currently getting featured is if you go into the podcast section of the iTunes directory and go to music or just put in the iTunes field “indie feed,” you’ll find several of the shows we have available for subscription. What that means is you can click the “subscribe” button and from that point forward automatically get the new features in the podcast section of your desktop, and you can listen to them. You can obviously attach your iPod and take those on the fly. We also Twitter out the features, so you listen to them as they come in. But all the features are pretty much the same. You can also find it on our Facebook page.
What is the song selection process like?
CM;
What we do is have a submission process and a rights clearance process. Everything we play on Indie Feed has the rights cleared. We vet submissions and review every single submission that comes into the website. We work with third-party promoters and promotional companies that are doing digital work for their client base. We also work with distribution houses that are pre-clearing the content. We have a team of what we consider to be specialists who vet the content and really on the basis of their experience filter out the content they feel is inappropriate. To the extent that we don’t have the rights cleared on the content, we will seek that clearance. And to the extent that we do, we have the artists or the third party send out an online clearance. We’ve gotten to the point where it takes a short amount of time to get the rights cleared.
If you were an artist in this day and age, what would you be doing with podcasting to get heard? What’s the pitch? Is it cold calling, is it third party? What does it look like? It has to mirror the antiquated system of talking to the program director at radio at some point; there has to be a filtering process…
CM:
When artists ask me that I ask “What do you want to accomplish?” If all they are looking to do is attempting to get airplay there are certain ways to do that but I think it’s more interesting if you’re a person that wants to control the outcome and can create content that might be useful. Whether it’s deliverable by subscribed media, or deliverable on YouTube, or deliverable on a news or email message, it’s irrelevant. It’s that you’re creating something that’s new, useful and of use to your recipient. This really opens up a much larger discussion about band relationships and keeping your best fans in contact with you and you with them. That’s one direction.
The other direction is if you’re in a position where all you want is airplay, there are some tips and tricks to make sure that happen. First of all, even the largest new media outlets still are going to likely be small shops. There are people behind those e-mails. The whole notion of sending a blanket press release is pretty much dead. They are very presumptuous and think very little of the result. In addition, mass e-mails that start with, “Hey you” or “What’s up?” make it clear that the artist really doesn’t have an interest in developing a relationship with the party for distribution. They just want to get some airplay. What I recommend first is that the artist does a little bit of research and take a listen to the variety of shows that are out there and make a determination as to whether they think their content will fit on the channel. Once they refine that list, I would consider to research and try to figure out who the principles of the small organizations are and then try to establish a reach relationship. Go out and find their names and ask them what their submission process is instead of just sending their format. What often happens is that their formats get burned. There might be opportunities that may not be evident. There might be opportunities for bartered services and opportunities for an artist to get some sort of list. The closer the relationship the artist can have with these new channels of distribution, the more likely they will have a lasting relationship that will work for them rather than against them. I’ll say what doesn’t work: random e-mails. Even if you’re a promoter and have 20, 30 or 40 acts, the press releases that don’t have access to the content are just a waste of time. And we get a lot of really big companies like big record labels that send out information about their indie bands, and they don’t give any information except what they want you to know in three or four paragraphs of content and maybe a picture. It’s completely useless for folks like us.
Talk to me more about that. I guess you are looking for more than just the music. You’re looking for someone’s commentary about the music and their process? Is that really a regular part of it?
CM:
There are two things. One – the model that’s currently out there, and you can’t really blame promoters for this, is that they’re looking for blog play. In other words, their view of what is going to create lift is if they can get “bloggers” blog about an artist, and there are a lot of bloggers out there. But that’s not really what we’re doing and not necessarily what other people that post analog radio content are interested in. We’re not interested in hearing the story or a recast of that. What we’re interested in is having access to the content and being able to figure out how to integrate it into our programming. And then because it’s necessary to get the rights because this is downloaded content that invokes mechanical compulsory fee licensing we have to get the clearance for that as well. I think the problem is that a lot of the outbound messaging isn’t designed to receive us. The upside is great. To get attention drawn to one show or one feature by a new artist can help an audience understand them and that is a truly valuable thing. Even if it requires a little bit of adjusting from the artist’s standpoint it’s well worth the time. I would say that would be good advice for any subscribe-able content, whether that’s Internet content where you’re doing an interview, or any content where you’re integrating.
Can you give me an example of something you received that you felt should be replicated by other artists?
CM:
The easiest way is when someone submits the content in the way that meets the submission requirements. If an artist that has the wherewithal to host their content so they can just sent a link and send that link in the context of the submission guidelines that really helps. Outside of that I’m sure they could create some unique, creative methodology to try to get someone’s attention, and we have had direct calls where we do respond.
Also, Make sure you have a narrative you wish to share. Your story is as important as your content, because your story is your content in addition to the music. Be prepared to provide that. It’s a creative process. You can portray aspects about your act and the direction your act is heading in a way that’s very compelling. In other words, if you have a scenario where you’ve met some level of adversity and you’ve overcome it, you can tell a story about that. It’s a compelling piece of information. Or perhaps all your band members are from one place or from very different places. Or you have a unique perception – your band is distributed where you have one person in one place and another in the other, and you attached all the content together in a special or unique way – something that differentiates you. In the context of being able to tell a story, studies have shown that grounding a band experience into context is going to increase memory retention in a world where there is so much music out there and the metadata of the music is not necessarily with the content by which you are experiencing it. So because you don’t know the name of the band or where it is from, if you can tie something to what you’re doing, you stand a much better chance of remaining at the top of the mind with a listener to the point where they would click to purchase the content or go to see the show.
For More information about Chris and his company checkout IndieFeed
I hadn’t heard anything about music on mobile phones, ringtones, ring back tones or anything like that in a while and yet a few years ago I felt like no one would shut up about such things. Maybe it got lost in the Iphone culture we live in but I wanted to reach out to someone who really knew and see what was going on there-
Jonathan Dworkin is the Head of Major Label Relations at Nokia. Jon began his career as an audio engineer, moved into the legal department at Atlantic records and went on manage hip-hop producers such as Pete Rock and J Dilla. From there, he went on to become a pioneer in the ringtone business at a company called Lagardere Active North America, subsequently, Cellfish Media. Jon conceived of and built projects like “Blingtones” and “Barrio Mobile” which were some of the first brands to create and distribute made-for-mobile content from major urban and Latin artists. Jon is currently working on the Global roll out of the Nokia “Comes with Music” project and several other music related initiatives at Nokia.
Thanks very much for taking the time Jon. Can you tell me a bit about your job at Nokia currently?
JD:
I negotiate with the major labels. There are two of us who deal with the majors, so I focus on Warner Music Group, Universal North America and Sony. I negotiate the deals to enable Nokia to launch its products around the world. The flagship product and the one we’re focused on is Comes with Music, where you’re entitled to unlimited music when you purchase certain Nokia handsets. The price of the unlimited downloads is built into the price of the handsets, so from a consumer perspective, it’s essentially free.
How is the rollout going? What are you finding out about the consumer’s willingness to pay for an all-you-can-eat subscription plan bundled with a piece of hardware?
JD:
It’s going quite well. One of the most remarkable things is that we’ve now launched 30 countries in 18 months. That’s just an unbelievably paced rollout.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s why you only deal with two companies, because it’s just territory after territory after territory with different rights, is that correct?
JD:
Yes. More or less. There’s an enormous amount of on-going business development, not just with Comes with Music but with our other stuff as well. But it’s more than a full-time job looking after the two labels plus the North America piece of Universal. In some markets we’re drastically changing the industry. I don’t know if any of this is out yet, but I know in some markets we’re either approaching the largest or are the largest digital service provider for music. It’s really exciting.
I know Comes with Music is not your only product, and I also wanted to talk about some of your past experience in the ringtone market. What should people be thinking about in terms of distributing their music digitally? Is that a real, viable income stream when you’re a developing artist – do people actually see any real uptick either in exposure or revenue?
JD:
I think the question may be a little bit backwards. I would think of it like this: my firm belief (and I think yours having talked about this before as well) is that the days of playing at some little club with 20 people in it and some A&R guy coming in and signing your band, and you making a record and becoming a huge star are over- if they ever really existed. I think now more and more, it’s the artist’s responsibility to develop their audience, and that means playing your music, developing your sound, connecting with an audience, growing that audience and finding different ways to stay connected. I think the really exciting thing about digital, and in particular, mobile is that it really enables you to have a relationship- an intimate relationship- with very little barrier. I can literally be in somebody’s pocket. We used to say this all the time at Cellfish: What more powerful relationship can you have with a fan than to literally be in their pocket? You’ve heard this many times, if you leave your wallet at home, you probably won’t go back for it, if you leave your keys, you may go home, but if you leave your phone, you almost always go home. So, it’s an incredibly intimate and present relationship. I think now with applications, you can engage your audience in a much deeper way. So am I saying that if you’re an independent artist, you’re going to make millions of dollars suddenly by distributing via mobile or digital? No, or at least it’s very unlikely. But what I do think is true is that the tools are there to connect to your audience with very little barrier.
What has the trend been? How is the consumer using mobile media most on a mobile device? I mean, ringtones have kind of peaked. Are ring-back tones rising or falling? Are people just listening to straight mp3s? What are consumer patterns like in the mobile space right now? I feel like digital is really well covered, but how the average artist gets out to a mobile carrier is kind of a mystery to me.
JD: The high level of usage we’re seeing for full digital track listening on handsets is staggering. Ringtones I think have largely peaked, at least in the U.S. I don’t think anybody’s seeing a lot of growth in ringtones right now. Ringbacks are an absolutely staggering business, but it tends to be a business that does really well outside the U.S., particularly in places like China and in India, where there’s huge uptake for ring-back tones. In some markets with really high piracy rates today, it’s among one of the very few and very large income streams. What I think is really one of the most exciting things is this convergence thing, where you don’t have multiple devices. People seem to be a lot more open to this. I think we’re learning this with our various services, both with Comes with Music and the Nokia Music Stores. You don’t really need to carry around two devices anymore. I have a phone that has a qwerty keyboard 16 gigs of memory and a Comes with Music subscription, and I’ve got unlimited access to music on my handset. It’s what I take to the gym, it’s what I ride on the train with. I don’t have another device. I think that trend is pretty amazing, and I think the “always connected always on” piece is amazing. If I hear something at a club, there is music ID software, I can grab it, automatically download it and listen to it on the way home. I think mobile is really becoming a lot more focal. The line between digital music and mobile music is really becoming blurred.
What are the other initiatives for Nokia in music?
JD: It’s “Comes with Music” and the “Nokia Music Store”. The Nokia Music Store is our a la cart, pay-per-download music store, and the Comes with Music is our pay for unlimited downloads. Those are really our key initiatives. Our key focus on the music team at Nokia is on rolling out and growing Comes with Music and the a la cart Music Store.
You know how to be scrappy, you’ve been a manager, you’ve done the DIY thing to death. What would you do if you were handling an artist in today’s climate to maximize their presence and impact on the mobile platform?
JD:
First of all, there are a lot of really great aggregators out there that can help you get your music out to various platforms. I think, like all things, just having the distribution is one thing, but then you need to hustle. It’s a hustle business. One of the things I learned a long time ago is that if you’re not willing to grind as an artist, there are 20 people who are. Once you have a deal or some way of getting your music on-boarded to these digital services, then you need to work to make sure you’re being account managed and giving the people that are account managers at those services something to talk about which means doing all the same grassroots stuff you had to do before and getting all the numbers – blog numbers, Myspace numbers, anything you can track – so you can then go to an account manager and say, “Hey, look. I’m putting up great numbers here. This is really interesting.” It always works very well also if you can be regionally focused and say, “Hey, in this region, I’m really big.” And then you can work regionally instead of trying to go out of the box at something beyond you. Working in your region and working with your account managers to really engage the digital services interested in what you’re doing is a full-time hustle.
Can you point to a success story like that?
JD: I don’t know if I can point to a success story that’s solely a mobile one, although I’m sure they’re out there. But I think bands like Local Native have done really well and put up great numbers for digital, been really well managed and have really crossed into the buzz band thing. So I think bands that are out there and working hard and doing their own thing kind of the ABCs of being in a growing band – touring, putting records out, engaging their audience – are doing great on the digital platforms as well.
Is there a type of artist – be it genre specific or stylistically – that does better in the digital space than not? I remember ringtones always seemed to be skewed urban, R&B crossover and Latin. Are you finding there’s a stylistic or genre-specific type of music that does better in terms of listening?
JD:
I know exactly what you’re talking about. Ringtones for a very long time skewed very urban. I’m not seeing that so much in the mobile thing. What’s really interesting is that in Comes with Music we’re seeing that people are exploring music across a lot more genres. I think the access model – the all-you-can-eat model – really encourages people to explore a broader spectrum of music. It’s a really interesting phenomenon when you have unlimited access. I think overall we’re seeing genres represented in the physical, mobile, digital worlds in the same ways . I don’t think any out-performs in any one area. But within the access model we’re seeing people explore a broader set.
From not just your current position but from your experience in general, would you have any parting advice for artists?
JD:
I think I may be reiterating what I said earlier, but it’s so critically important: The days of being discovered in a basement and shooting to the top of the charts are gone. The most important thing is playing music you love, finding an audience, growing an audience and letting things happen organically. I used to talk about the Dave Matthews scenario all the time when I was a manager, which was that before Dave Matthews signed to RCA he was selling a ton of records on his own. That’s an incredible situation to be in and shows that he was grinding, touring, finding an audience, engaging the audience. That’s what you have to do. Waiting around for somebody to give you a break is just not how the business works. The more you can focus on just making great music and not waiting around for somebody to discover you but making it happen on your own, that’s the thing that separates the wheat from the chaff.
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Click to learn more about Jon and Comes with Music
David Burch is the Director of Marketing for tubemogul a video distribution and video ad platform. David came out of an e-commerce background before starting with tubemogul several years ago. I am NOT in any way endorsed or compensated by tubemogul but I am a big fan of their free video distribution and analytics services and wanted to know more about the company as I often get questions about how best to circulate and promote music videos.
Tell me a little bit about the company and why it was founded and what you guys are doing
DB:
We were founded originally when YouTube first took off in 2006. Back then they didn’t really have a lot of good analytics and numbers in who was watching what and how often. So we entered this world and said, “Okay, we’ll be the Nielsen of this world.” But because the technology and the Internet is such that instead of tracking panels based in 10,000 households, we can track every single stream that’s out there. We tried to make it a little more sophisticated. Then, because YouTube was taking off and the new media industry was taking off and people were tracking the way videos were playing across all these different sites, they requested we add a product where they could upload to all the different sites simultaneously as well, so we did that. That product still exists today, and we expanded and tried to build on it. It’s called “One Load Now” for obvious reasons. One upload to the top video sites that we automatically start tracking the analytics on all the sites. We have been expanding a lot of our analytics relationships, and we’re tracking billions of monthly streams across the top video platforms and sites, across thousands of different publishers.
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I know this is going to sound like a funny question, but do you have success stories you can point to that your data actually caused somebody who was unaware of some heat on their product or content caught fire and used your product to expand their views and push their product to places it hadn’t been?
DB:
If you’re thinking about musicians, I know there are thousands of small musicians using our free product. I don’t know a prominent one I can name. There are a lot of smaller bloggers that have really taken off. Like Gary Vaynerchuk is a good example. A guy named Brian Brushwood was one of our first users and actually got signed professionally with a network after he started to distribute and gain awareness. There are a lot of examples. In terms of indirect benefits, by being in multiple places at once, you’re increasing your video SEO value. I’m not necessarily a pundit in the space, but there are people that are paying clients that use us for this specific purpose – to increase their organic search rating – and they come up more prominently and more often in searches.
Are there different advantages to different video sites in particular, or is it just a matter of covering all the bases in your experience.
DB:
You’re going to get most of your views on YouTube. Period. But there is this long tail of other sites that have very dedicated fans. You might, if someone likes your content, get featured on their homepage, or you might get featured somewhere else more prominently. I think it’s really a matter of getting out there and finding your audience and trying to learn when you get bigger unexpectedly, trying to learn why that happened.
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Tell me more about the analytics piece. What kind of data are you able to track with both your regular and your pro product?
DB:
The free product actually comes with most of the analytics built in. We track views, which is an obvious metric, but also viewed minutes. A view is tracked as soon as someone hits “play” on the video. We track how long someone actually watched before they clicked away. We also track things like completion rates – how many people watched a video until it finished, comments, ratings, also viewer attention span on an individual video level and a publisher/campaign level across all their videos, audience geography – which states were people viewing video in, etc.
You track by IP addresses basically?
DB:
Yeah. We also track whether a video was embedded. That one is worth emphasizing, because if you’re asking which metrics really matter – embedding does. Other than just going to Google and running a search or clicking around YouTube, the second most common way videos are discovered online is through embeds. Going in and figuring out who is embedding your video and driving views can be really valuable. It is important to take care of the people that are driving a lot of your views – especially in music. That’s why when EMI blocked embeds, they’re going to see their viewership crater a little bit. Embeds are how new music videos and new videos in general tend to be discovered. You increase your chances of going viral.
Oddly enough, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back with EMI’s flagship online video artist OK Go. They left the label as a result of that decision I believe.
DB:
Yeah. I remember being asked what kind of effect it would have, and we were trying to quantify it. People at YouTube say this, and we’ve seen it in the monthly stats we track – how many embeds per view a video gets really early in its life cycle has good predictive value for how viral a video will be. There are a bunch of other stats we track that are important as well.
That’s good to know that early embeds are such a predictor of future success.
DB:
I think they are one of the main engines of early discovery – how people find videos. When you think about it, that’s true with my experience. I watch a lot of the videos I watch on a daily basis on blogs or on other publication sites.
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Which other recommended practices would you suggest for those trying to get their videos out there? There’s embedding, there’s making sure you’re on all the different networks. What else?
DB:
I think good PR outreach is always good. That’s a good tip in general and not just specific to our product. Just distribution and paying attention to where you’re getting views is important as well. Coupled with aggressive use of social media. A viewer that watches a video that found they through Twitter or Facebook tends to watch it longer than a viewer coming from anywhere else online. I forget which social media success story said “Especially if you’re small and scrappy and looking to make it. You really want to leverage the Twitter, Facebook and aggressively interact with your audience.” We have found it to be true.
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All images belong to Tubemogul and are re-posted from their research pages. If you have video or videos I highly suggest you explore their services.
This is part 2 of 2 of an interview with Ian Rogers – the CEO of Topspin. If you missed part 1 you can read that here.
How do you respond to the criticism of Topspin’s ability to develop artists? More often than not I hear- “That’s great for established artists, but what are you doing for the developing artist? What are you doing for brand building?” I realize you’ve discussed some of that, but what do you say to people?
IR:
It makes sense. It’s deserved. We built our name on the bigger projects we’ve done. I would argue there are 500 artists on Topspin, and most people could only name a couple. We’ve worked with artists of all sizes. We’ll continue to. It’s really a business and marketing decision for us. The reality is, depending on who you believe, there are five million artists on Myspace and hundreds of thousands of artists on TuneCore and Reverb Nation, but I really believe that the number of people that could actually make a living playing music is more in the range of 50,000. It’s an aspirational business, there are a lot of hobbyists. Topspin is really meant to be a professional tool. A lot of people don’t really want to hear that. If you’re not going to make $5,000 selling direct from artist to fan, then Topspin is probably not the right tool for you. We’ve tried to be really upfront and honest about that, but it’s not necessarily the message everyone wants to hear. We’re trying to create a healthy middle class of artists. Our goal is not to charge five million artists $10. That’s not how I want to build my business.
I haven’t heard that from you guys before. Maybe I haven’t been doing my homework and reading enough interviews, but I hadn’t heard that.
IR:
I don’t think we’ve been particularly clear about it, to be honest with you. We work with so many small artists that it feels a bit moot. We work with small artists every day. I actually just had a phone call this morning with one of our partners, and we’re trying to put together a platform that’s literally turnkey, to easily set up an artist’s site – sort of Band Camp simple. We’re definitely trying to get there. I don’t want to keep anybody out, but at the same time, my goal is not to make $10 on five million artists. I’d love to have a few thousand artists who are making money on Topspin. That’s our goal. I think that’s hard for people to get their head around, because that’s not the way a lot of people are building their businesses. The other thing – I’ll throw this out there – that’s why I’m working personally with the Get Busy Committee.
I was going to ask you what made you choose them, because it’s not like you’re not busy.
IR:
To be honest, for me, if I’m not using the product I’m probably not very good at leading the company. I wouldn’t be very good at running Flickr if I didn’t take photos. I felt like I needed to be a customer. So I kind of had in the back of my head that I was looking for something to try. The Get Busy Committee stuff was great, because a) I really liked it, and as someone that grew up listening to the Beastie Boys and NWA, it’s just a record I loved, and I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I don’t really care, because I genuinely love it and think it’s a truly great album from some guys who could’ve been taken that to a label, but chose not to because they’d been through the label system already and they just wanted to do it themselves. It was exciting to me for that reason. I also thought, because of the criticism you brought up, this is a band that does not exist. It’s not even like they were small and then decided to tour for a while. Before October of last year, they literally did not exist. When I started working for them, I registered the domain, and we built it from scratch. We have many thousands of people on the e-mail list, we have 2,000 people on Facebook. I don’t want to say how much out of respect for the band but let’s put it this way, we’ve cleared that $5,000 direct to fan hurdle I mentioned a moment ago.
So they are making a full time living at this?
IR:
I wouldn’t say we’re making enough money that three guys are making a living, no. We still haven’t done any tours. Thankfully they have other things going on in their lives that they’re not trying to earn a living solely on the band at this point, but we’re definitely covering all our costs and are spending money. We’re spending money on Web design, we’re getting a little bit of PR help, a little bit of help here and there, and we’ve made more money than we’ve spent at this point, which is a great thing. I kind of want to prove that it’s possible. This is not just, “Take some established people and pump them through the machine.” There are a number of people that have built it from the ground, up on Topspin. If you look at bands like Golden Filter, or the way we started the fan campaign here, there are lots of small examples and a couple higher-profile examples as well. The bottom line is, you have to have a product that people want and care about first. What Topspin is really for is bands that have fans or are capable of having fans. There’s no real bar below that.
Talk to me about your competition out there. Reverb Nation has widgets, and Nimbit has an all in artist services environment. There are a lot of people jumping into the artists’ tools business. Unfortunately the entrepreneurial aspirations seem to be more lucrative than the sale of music. How do you stack up, and do you even see those companies as competitors? I guess the question comes down to – why Topspin?
IR:
It’s a good question. The ones that you mention – both ReverbNation and Nimbit – we’re super friendly with. I think we’re a lot less competitive with ReverbNation. They have marketing tools, and we’ve talked a lot about how ReverbNation widgets become end caps for Topspin widgets. They’re a broad marketing platform, and our tools could easily fit in there. Their ecommerce is also integrated with AudioLife, who is now one of our partners. Ecommerce and store-building is not one of the core competencies of Reverb Nation. I think fundamentally they’re for a different kind of artist. They are going for monetizing hundreds of thousands of artists, where we’re going for monetizing a few thousand artists. Our tools are going to reflect that and reflect a more professional artist. In general, we’re the only platform that really has the demand generation marketing tools and the ecommerce marketing tools integrated in the way that they are with the feature set that we have.
I don’t think anybody’s investing as heavily in it as us or moving as quickly as we are. What a lot of people have are essentially fulfillment tools with no real marketing tools. I don’t think fulfillment is a particularly difficult technical challenge. There are a lot of ways you can sell stuff but managing fans and generating demand is a difficult part. When you put those two together so you can do marketing activities and then can follow them all the way through to the transaction and get all the analytics that you need out of the other side to understand what’s working and what isn’t, my sincere belief is that no one’s really close to us there, and they’re not going to get particularly close. For us, the real competitors that we’re looking at are people that we actually bid against every day out there in the field. It’s more existing legacy ecommerce systems, and those are ecommerce systems that are inside of labels and Live Nation and those sorts of things. At the end of the day those aren’t really competition because they’re fulfillment platforms and not marketing platforms with fulfillment built in.
The name of the game for us is to just keep moving harder and faster on the marketing features side and keep so far ahead that artists say, “Wow, I have to use these tools because they really work.” They really do – as Metric’s marketing manager put it – “I built a six-figure business where I had a zero dollar business the year before, took my e-mail list to 135,000 plus where it was 4,000 the year before.” Those are the kinds of stories we need to get out there that really differentiate us from the competition, because anybody who says, “Oh, well I’ve got a shopping cart. I don’t need Topspin” is really missing the point. There’s no way that their shopping cart delivered them more than 100,000 e-mail addresses and on its own delivered them a six-figure business. It’s the integration of all those tools that work.
There’s a great set of books about innovation The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution and a third one, Seeing What’s Next. The author, Clayton Christensen says, the mantra in the book is, “When the technology is not yet good enough, the integrated solution is the best solution.” I think that’s the story, not only of innovation throughout the ages, but definitely the story of digital music. That’s why the iPod has had such dominance. I think in this space, you could cobble together a Topspin solution out of a bunch of pieces. You could take a Yahoo store and a ReverbNation widget and Constant Contact or whatever and put the pieces together; but I think people who are serious professionals aren’t looking for the cut-rate solution, they’re looking for the integrated solution that gives them all the info they need. That’s what we’re trying to be. We would really like to be the marketing platform that people who are marketing professionals use.
I think we have a long way to go, and that the Pro-Tools analogy is real. We want to be for digital marketing what Pro-Tools is, was and has been for digital production. I think if you look back to Sound Tools 1.0, by today’s standards we would laugh at that piece of software. I think five years from now we’ll look at where we are with Topspin now and laugh too. I’m not going to pretend it’s the be all, end all, but we’re working our asses off, we’re releasing new code every week, we’re actually working with the software ourselves to build marketing campaigns. If you look at something like Sara Lowe’s site, that site was built this past Sunday in four hours. That really I think is the promise: that you can actually build great sites that work and that deliver dollars and capture fans and build fan connections quickly so you can spend your time doing higher-value things.
Tell me why, from a business perspective you guys decided it was necessary to have a training course for people to be certified to operate this marketing environment. I don’t disagree that the average lay person on the street definitely needs some background and frame of reference, but I thought it was an interesting business decision.
IR:
If you think about the business and where it’s at, this business is really akin to Salesforce.com where you have a new and effective way of running your business with this tool, but even if the tool is good, and the tool has been coming along, it is still challenging to use. Even if the tool was perfect, it doesn’t mean making the tool is going to make people great marketers and great operators of the tool. If you have a tool with enough power in it, people need to be taught how to use it. It’s analogous to Pro-Tools or PhotoShop, Premiere or After Effects – any of those tools. You can’t just pick up that software out of the box and say, “Alright, I’m an artist!” or “I’m a graphic designer!” I think our goal has been to make a tool which is powerful, and I’d rather have it be powerful and full featured than easy to use at this point. We have a really hungry user base that wants powerful features. We’ll continue to make it easier to use over time, but I’d rather the feature exist than it’s easy to use at this point.
When you have a few hundred customers, you can teach them how to use a powerful feature. We’re not trying to be Yahoo. We’re not trying to have a hundred million people using Topspin, we’re trying to have a few thousand really talented people using it. So having a training program, which covers the basics of how we look at marketing and how we’ve had success at building campaigns, and then how to use the software felt really natural given what we were trying to accomplish. Also, our goal again is not to sell you something and then walk away from you: “Okay, we signed up 100,000 artists. Great! We’re done.” We don’t want to make money unless our artists make money, and we want our artists to make a lot of money. It’s not a “Hey we got you on the system. Check!” We really want you to actually be successful in gathering fans, selling things and building a business. Having people be successful on the platform is as important to us as having them be on the platform, which is the short version of why we have a training program.
You have a very unique vantage point given your position and background in the business. Do you have any advice to artists out there that are struggling to know where to turn with all these tools and all these options that have come up in the last five years?
IR:
There’s more information out there than ever, and I think it depends on which kind of artist they are. Are they the kind of artist that wants to get deep in the mix on this? I’d still recommend that artists first partner with a great manager. That’s going to help them make all these decisions, and hopefully the manager is really up on this stuff and can do all this heavy lifting so they can concentrate on their art and communicating with their fans.
Without a great product, it’s a dead issue.
IR:
Exactly. I think the product at this point does include that fan communication, but still there should be a manager that’s worrying about the details like Topspin. I think resources like yours are great places to get started because you can get real human beings who will help you. I actually have been so impressed with what Berklee School of Music has been doing. If I were 18, that’s what I would be doing – I’d be at BerkleeOnline.com taking the music classes and the music business classes because I think pursuit of knowledge is great, there’s a lot of great knowledge there, it’s relatively inexpensive relative to the value you’re getting, and you’re going to meet people as well.
We had several interns – mostly from Berklee School of Music – at Topspin last summer and mostly found them jobs at the end. Being out there and having those connections is really important. I would start at those places that are umbrellas, which are relatively open and not tied to any one approach, but really dedicated to seeing entrepreneuring artists succeed. I think the other thing that’s interesting is that being an artist is more like being an entrepreneur than ever. I find myself talking about start-up culture with bands a lot as well, blogs like StartupHacks and VCHacks, books like the Innovators’ Solution and things are somehow pertinent to artists as well. But really I would start with the Music Power Network , Berklee College of Music, blogs like yours, that sort of thing.
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