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.
Brian Meece is the CEO and co-founder of RocketHub, a platform that has helped thousands of artists and entrepreneurs further connect with their fans and brands, providing them with tools to help them raise funds and awareness for their creative projects. Brian is also a lifelong musician who continues to perform and record. A graduate of film school, he officially made his way to the music industry through creative media and creative arts. Brian started RocketHub when he began to see how powerful the community funding/crowdfunding model could be for artists across media and decided he wanted to create a company specifically geared towards artists that would educate, empower and support them as they worked get their creative projects off the ground.
Brian talked to me about how the crowdfunding model works and about the mission of RocketHub. He also shared some tips for artists that want to successfully harness the power of this fan funding model in order to build mutually-beneficial relationships with their fans and get their dream projects off the ground.
How did you get into the music industry and come up with the idea to start the RocketHub platform?
BM:
My background mostly before starting RocketHub was in creative media and creative arts. I went to undergrad for film and made some films. And I have been playing in bands since I was in high school. I recognized that in the world of indie filmmaking and the world of indie music, a lot of early adopters were gravitating towards a community funding model that we now know as the crowdfunding model. We were seeing it when Darren Aronofsky raised money for his first breakout movie Pi in the late ‘90s. He reached out to his community to raise about $60,000 and make that movie happen. It was the first time I had seen this phenomenon.
Then, years later, I saw Jill Sobule do a fan-funding campaign on her own and raise over $100,000. I recognized that this community funding model that we know as crowdfunding was something that was going to become part of the new media landscape. And I wanted to build a company that was artist friendly and would educate, empower and support artists and creative people looking to get funding and build awareness for their projects. So, that’s how RocketHub came to be.
And your official title is co-founder and CEO?
BM:
In the tech startup world there are a lot of CEOs out there. It’s important to note that it’s not just me, but the whole team behind RocketHub that are all also cut from a creative cloth. We all came together to build a company and organization that’s really supportive of the Arts and of the folks pursuing their dreams.
What is crowdfunding, and how does the RocketHub platform work?
BM:
Crowdfunding is an online event that harnesses a community for funding, awareness and feedback. This event has a beginning, a middle and end to it. It’s very different from the standard ecommerce play where you open up a store and sell stuff online. And it’s different from a donation play where there’s an online tip jar. Crowdfunding is very much an event that galvanizes communities to participate within a very specific amount of time.
The way our platform works is that an artist comes to RocketHub, uploads the title of their project and what they’re looking to do – whether it’s recording an album, a music video, doing a tour or something along those lines. And they’ll typically have a pitch video talking about themselves, their passion for the project, and a detailed project description. Then, they’ll set a goal amount – what they’re looking to raise. Most music projects we’ve seen are between $2,000 and $10,000. We’ve had other projects raise tens of thousands of dollars and some raise over $100,000. But, most music projects raise in that $2,000 – $10,000 range. And they usually accomplish this goal in between 60 and 90 days. On the project page, there’s also a rewards menu that outlines what funders get in exchange for their financial contributions. For example, they might get a digital download of the album for $10 or a physical CD that’s signed with a memento for $20. They may get a bundle or another cool experience for $50. And it scales up. We’ve seen donations of $100 and even $1,000 or $5,000 come in for certain projects. If the reward is really exciting, and the fan base is there to support the project, it can be a cool and interesting way to monetize communities based on these different levels of support.
You said something interesting to me the other day. You mentioned you really weren’t selling music and the final product as much as you were selling an experience.
BM:
Yes. We really are selling the experience. This funding model is about the relationship that these funders – and we call them “fuelers” on RocketHub – have with the artist/person spearheading the project. It’s about the relationship that those fuelers have with this creative person and that they have with each other – their ability to connect and communicate. It’s really about how fans participate with the funding, how they connect with the artist and the other funders and what they get back in exchange for the financial contribution. It’s a very different phenomenon from just going to the store or downloading something. It’s very impactful when done correctly.
The music projects on RocketHub make up about 25 percent of all the projects that come through the site. And we have a really high hit rate for music projects. Many musicians already have loyal fan bases and are already communicating with fans in ways that they weren’t doing ten years ago. A lot of projects can get made with 50-100 people, because the average contribution to music projects on the site is a little over $60. So, you can go back into the project budget and say, “Okay, if I need $6,000, that’s a little over 100 people I need to say ‘yes’ to this project.” And that’s very doable for a lot of emerging artists that are looking to take the next step with their careers by getting a tour or an album or music video out.
It’s really exciting to see music and crowdfunding fitting together so well.
I’m the kind of guy who struggled to even ask people to sponsor me when I ran a marathon. Do you find that there is some sort of acclimation process involved in the process of getting people comfortable with the idea of asking their peers for donations? How would you advise people to get past that mental hurdle?
BM:
First of all, I don’t really like to look at this as a “donation” model. You want to push the “trade,” not the “aid” angle. And the “trade” angle is where the rewards come in. Also, we’re artists, not charities. We’re asking for support and contributions. But we’re also offering something to our network. We’re offering cool rewards and scarce experiences. That’s really what the campaign should be about: “Here’s what I’m up to. Here’s why I’m doing it. And here’s what you can get if you come along for the ride.” When you frame your campaign around that type of communication, you get a lot better response than you do if you say, “Hey, I need money for this.”
For example, I ran my own campaign. And I can tell you, it takes a little bit of commitment and a little bit of gusto to get it together and put a project out to the world. It’s a little scary. But what I really enjoyed about it was that it gave me an excuse to reach out to people that I hadn’t talked to or seen in a while. I said, “Here’s what I’m up to, just FYI. Here’s what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. If you’re interested in this – and I hope you are – here’s how you can become a part of it. If you’re intrigued, come join the tribe.” And that communication really worked well with my audience. I have a hunch it would also work well with a lot of other artists’ audiences.
That “trade, not aid” mantra gets us, as artists, out of the mindset of fundraising or asking for tips or donations; because that’s really not what crowdfunding is about. It’s patronage meets commerce – a new spin on an old idea. I like to say, “Beethoven, plus social media equals crowdfunding.” What I mean by that is, it’s the old idea of patronage meets this new concept of being connected to a massive amount of people; crowdfunding is really just mass patronage. It’s pretty cool to see this idea of patronage reemerge on top of social media.
Yeah. It’s wonderful.
I often find that musicians, myself included, get ahead of ourselves pretty often and place the cart before the horse in a lot of situations. My inclination with setting up a crowdfunding campaign would be to say, “I put a band together, and we had one rehearsal. Now, let’s raise some money!” Because I don’t have any patience. When is the right time in a musician’s career for this type of crowdfunding campaign? Is there a baseline amount of fans or activity a band should realize before embarking on this type of project?
BM:
I would say that crowdfunding works for artists at a lot of different levels. So, it depends on what you’re trying to raise. The band you just described that has been jamming in a garage for a month or two may not be ready to raise $10,000 – $12,000 to do a big double LP. But they will very likely be able to raise $1,000 – $1,500 to go do a little demo EP or to do a higher-end show to premiere the band.
If you’re an emerging artist, I’d say, be realistic with your goals. And know that the average contribution to music projects is about $60. So, to raise $1,000 you need 20-30 people to say “yes” to a project, which is not really a lot. Just be reasonable in what you want to raise based on where you are in your creative journey. We’ve found that emerging artists that are just looking to start something raised $500 – $1,500. We’ve seen mid-level artists raise $5,000, plus. And we’ve seen larger, working artists that everyone may have heard of raise significantly more. It really just depends on where you are in your career. But you need to be aware that there is a strategy involved. If an emerging artist tries to raise $10,000, it’s going to be a lot tougher.
I know not every campaign is successful. From the vantage point of someone who sees thousands of these campaigns start up on RocketHub, which specific qualities do the artists that are successful at crowdfunding tend to have?
BM:
A successful RocketHub campaign typically has three core components. The first is an awesome project spearheaded by awesome people with passion. Believe it or not, just the fact that you’re making a record, a music video or planning a tour is not enough. It really needs to be as awesome as you can make it. The project doesn’t have to be really big either; it can be something really cool on a small scale. But as an artist, you just have to make it as awesome as you can and be front and center and have your band’s personality, or the creative team’s personality be front and center.
The second component you need in order to be successful is some sort of audience or network to start the campaign to. Obviously, the bigger the network, the more successful a campaign will be. But a lot of projects are funded through small communities. 20, 30, 50 or 100 people can add up significantly with a crowdfunding campaign. You want to have some kind of fan base to start. It doesn’t have to be massive.
The third thing you need in order to run a successful crowdfunding campaign is cool rewards. The $20 level is most popular one for music. It’s the single-most popular price point. But the average – the mien – is a little over $60. So, you want to make sure you also have a cool $50 reward and cool $100, $250, $500 and even $1,000 and $5,000 rewards, just in case you get a big-ticket player that wants to jump in.
Those are really the three core components we find successful projects have: 1) an awesome mission spearheaded by awesome people; 2) that fan base/audience that’s connected to them; 3) cool rewards to offer in exchange for the financial contribution. Those three things together are the Holy Grail.
The tiered model is always an interesting one. I was fortunate enough to work with Jill Sobule – who you mentioned earlier – when I was at Lava Records. For a $10,000 contribution, she actually offered the reward of being allowed to sing on her record. And somebody did it. And I don’t know if he ever sold any of these, but the drummer Josh Freese came up with a list of tiered rewards. And one of the upper echelons was, “Do mushrooms with me and the guys from Tool.” I don’t know if that’s something you’d want to advise, but it’s an interesting take on the model.
BM:
Well, and also, the RocketHub team loves helping artists. We love educating them on how to run campaigns and giving them a little feedback when they need it. As a team, we’re very accessible to artists. If you’re an artist, you shouldn’t look at the platform as just a website. The people behind it – myself included – are really passionate about helping artists raise funds and awareness.
There are a few crowdfunding sites out there, including Kickstarter and PledgeMusic. Why do you think artists should choose RocketHub?
BM:
We share this space with a variety of different companies. And overall, that’s a really good thing. Having some choice in the overall market stimulates demand for the entire industry. I think the biggest way we’re different because we’re always looking to add value for our creative users.
I think RocketHub has some technical differences as well as some softer-touch differences. In terms of technical differences, on RocketHub you don’t have to reach the full funding amount in order to unlock your funds like you do on some of our competitors’ platforms. So, if a musician sets a goal of $15,000 and raises $9,000 or $10,000, they’ll be able to walk away with funds – minus their credit card fees and RocketHub fees.
We’ve found that RocketHub is a great platform for creatives looking to make their projects happen and that are committed to making their projects happen, because they can aim high and still have a safety net if they don’t raise all their funds. On some of the other platforms, you can run a campaign, raise $8,000 or $9,000 of a $15,000 goal, and walk away with nothing because you didn’t hit the full funding amount. We want to really be artist friendly in that regard.
Another way we’re different is that we allow artists to launch projects from around the world. Some of our competitors don’t do that.
We also are looking to add value beyond the funding campaign. So, if you look at the front page of the RocketHub site now, you’ll see one of our Launchpad products. It’s basically a publicity firm in New York that’s going to give a month-long publicity campaign to an artist on RocketHub. These opportunities we open up are free to our creative users that have successfully funded on RocketHub. And we’re going to be doing more and more of that – trying really get exposure and extra awareness for artists that are doing special things on our site.
To learn more about Brian Meece and how his crowdfunding platform helps artists, check out the RocketHub website.
Amy Porterfield is a social media and marketing expert. She got her start in marketing right out of college when she began working for Harley-Davidson Motorcycles managing events and marketing campaigns. Then, she spent six years directing the content and marketing behind renowned Peak Performance Coach and Entrepreneur Tony Robbins. She currently works with the online marketing company Traffic Geyser where she has overseen several huge product launches, and is also a regular contributor at the world’s largest online social media magazine, Social Media Examiner. She helps entrepreneurs across industries establish strategies to help them maximize the power of social media and increase the success of their marketing efforts.
I got to talk to Amy about some common marketing mistakes artists make on Facebook and other social media sites, how to generate online content that keeps a conversation going and how musicians can establish a consistent blogging strategy.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Amy. How did you get into marketing?
AP:
I started out at Harley-Davidson in the marketing arena. I did a lot of event and promotional marketing for products and services and events. And from there, I loved what I was doing. But I was young and right out of college, so I wanted more. And I wanted to get into different aspects of marketing.
I became a fan of Tony Robbins. Long story short, I broke up with a boyfriend and couldn’t sleep at night. I saw all his infomercials playing every single night. And I got really hooked. I listened to one of his programs and loved everything about his message and what he was teaching people. I looked into it more, and I eventually ended up working for him. For about six-and-a-half years in the content development and marketing arena. I traveled with him, worked one on one with him and accompanied him to many of his events. Tony has a million ideas. He has a small team of content developers who turn them into products, event outlines or other ways to get out the message to his audience.
That was a whirlwind experience. From there, I moved into more online marketing with all his programs, services and events. That’s when I started to get really excited about online marketing and social media. At the very end of the time I was working with him, he got on Twitter. And he was very reluctant. At the time, Twitter wasn’t a huge venue yet. But a lot of people were saying it was an up-and-coming platform. When he got on Twitter, he quickly got over a million followers. And I thought, “Wow. There’s something here.” I started to dig a little deeper and fell in love with Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and all those great sites that give you massive exposure if you know how to use them right.
Because Tony taught me everything I needed to know about starting my own business, I eventually left and started my own social media consulting firm. And that’s what I do now.
And you’ve also written a book.
AP:
Yes. I co-authored the book Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies that just came out a few months ago. It’s basically your bible for all things Facebook marketing related. I say “bible,” because this thing is a big book. It’s over 600 pages of how-to for Facebook marketing. We talk about the strategy and the principles behind Facebook marketing in the beginning. And then we go through step by step how you execute these strategies, how they relate to your business and if they’re a right fit for you. Because the book is so big, I have two co-authors.
I certainly don’t want you to give away the milk without people buying the cow. You’re somebody that helps people with their brand – musician, self help guru, etc. Could you discuss some common mistakes people make with their Facebook and online social media strategies?
AP:
There are definitely some mistakes I see consistently across Facebook, Twitter, blogging platforms, all the great tools there are to use. Whether you’re a musician who has been out there for a while or someone who is just starting out, what’s so important is personal branding, especially as it relates to social media.
Social media gives you this huge platform to tell people who you are, what you’re about and really influence people and make them see you the way you want them to see you. You have control over that message when it comes to the social media. The biggest mistake I see is that people are not consistent and they’re not patient. I’ll give you a few mistakes, but I want to first start out with the mindset, and how these strategies really work. It takes time. You’re not going to see huge Facebook success over night. Even with Tony Robbins, it took us a while to really ramp up and have people catch onto his messages. Even for celebrities, it doesn’t necessarily happen overnight.
I think the people that really make a difference and get that exposure are those that network and connect through social media sites on a daily basis – Monday through Friday at least, maybe a little bit on the weekends. I think 10 or 15 minutes a day. But it’s a few posts per day and reaching out one-on-one with people through the different social media sites. That consistency of every single day makes a huge difference. Someone that does an outstanding job of getting exposure by doing it every day sees very different results than someone that does it once a week or every few weeks sees. That second person will die out very quickly. It says a lot about you personally if your personal brand is not consistent on these social sites.
So, the #1 important element is consistency. And then, patience goes along with that. It really does take time. You’re not going to see those big bangs for your buck right away. But if you have patience and trust this is going to work for you, you’ll stay consistent and stay the course. And if you’re aware these are two common mistakes, you can come out ahead of your competition pretty easily just by using patience and consistency as your secret weapons.
If I talk specifically about Facebook, because the book made me live, breathe and eat Facebook marketing, the #1 mistake I see with that is I think a lot of people don’t know how important it is to create a custom landing tab and a custom welcome landing tab for their Facebook page. I’m not a big advocate of lots of bells and whistles. You can use a lot of different apps and tricky, cool things on your Facebook page. But I think this can distract from your message. However, the one “bells and whistles” component is the custom welcome tab. It’s a tab you create that tells a little bit about you – who you are and what you’re about – and it gives a strong call to action that says, “Click the ‘Like’ button above.” If you set it as a default, this is where people land the first time they come to your page if they’re not a fan yet. You get to welcome them through this tab, and when they respond to your call to action, it automatically brings them to your wall, where they can get involved in the conversation. The last thing you want to do is start a conversation with somebody when they’re confused and don’t know what you’re about. And this is what happens when they go to your Facebook page and are immediately thrown onto your wall.
This custom welcome tab is your way of giving a quick introduction to yourself. This is especially great for musicians, who can highlight and point out who they are and what their skill is. You can even make a quick video of two, to three minutes of you doing what you do. Or, you can just use images and say what your skill is and why people should get to know you. Of course, the most important thing is writing the words, “Click the ‘Like’ button above.” And I always advise people to include a red arrow too that points to that “Like” button. Studies have shown that you can get 50% more likes on your Facebook page if you have this custom welcome tab that tells people to click the “Like” button; because, if they don’t click the “Like” button, you’re not going to get out into people’s newsfeeds. They’re never going to see you, because 90% of people don’t come back to your Facebook page after they click that “Like” button. Instead, they’re seeing you on their newsfeeds. And that first step to do that is to get them to click the “Like” button.
A lot of people skip this welcome tab step and say, “That’s not needed. I’ll start engagement and get people really excited about what I do.” But I really think you need that custom welcome tab first.
It’s pretty amazing, because there are a bunch of companies in the music industry that provide custom landing pages, where you can post music, video and tour dates. And many people don’t take advantage of that.
AP:
That’s cool. I didn’t realize there were companies in the industry that actually do that. Hopefully more people take advantage of that, because it’s so valuable.
You mentioned that your role for Tony Robbins was not only online marketing but also content creation, which is something I really stress; because if you’re selling a product, there has to be a reason people are going back to your website or looking at you on social media. There has to be a two-way conversation. What does a successful content conversation look like from your vantage point? How can you generate content and make it consistently interesting?
AP:
I love that question, because I think everything is all about content. Once you have your Facebook, Twitter and the rest of your foundation set up, your content is the most important thing. What I always say is, when it comes to social media sites, mix up your media. When we’re talking about social media sites – especially with musicians – I think you have a huge advantage because you can use video, audio and the written word interchangeably to attract your ideal audience. Some people – whether they like your music or not – want to listen to your music, where others want to actually see you perform it. All people are different in the sense of how they take in information.
When it comes to content, there are a few tips I have. First, I think you should mix up your media. So, one day, you could post a video – whether it’s of you or of somebody you admire or that your audience would love. Just posting videos and that kind of valuable content is a great way to get people engaged on Facebook. The #2 thing people do on Facebook is click on videos. The #1 thing they do is look at images. People love looking at photos on Facebook. So, if you go to a cool event, you should take videos. Or you can show people a “behind-the-scenes” look of your studio, or where you love to play music or write music the most. Take pictures of those environments. People love to see behind the scenes. You can use video and photos. Also, posting audio is just as valuable as posting other types of media especially with music. Mixing it up is important. And post one new thing per day. One day you can post a video, another you can do a great blog post. And maybe the next day you can post some great mp3 files. How you want to mix it up is up to you.
I also think stories are incredibly important when it comes to content. Talking about why you do what you do, what inspired you to write a certain song, the instruments and how you got started will really engage people. People love stories more than anything. So, if you can infuse stories into what you do as a musician, that is really valuable to marketing and getting the word out about yourself and what you do.
Do you feel it’s appropriate for people to share personal things that aren’t directly related to their business? For example, I coach musicians. But I’ll bitch about the fact that I haven’t had a good day of surfing in New York for a long time on Facebook. Do you advocate leaking personal information from outside one field’s of expertise, or should everything be relevant?
AP:
I have a model I follow with that, and I call it the “80/20.” What I do on my personal site and what I coach my clients to do is, 80% of the time on your Facebook page, you should focus on your business, your niche and you market. You can branch out a little bit, but 80% of the time, you should relate your posts to what you do and what people are coming to you for. Then, 20% of the time, completely step out of there. If I went on a family vacation with my husband and son, I might post some pictures of that. Or, my husband just became a firefighter, so I might post some pictures about that next week. You can – 20% of the time – post about things people might like to know about your life. Personal branding is about letting people know you’re human and have a life outside what you do. So, 20% of the time, I think that’s really important. But you have to keep yourself in check and make sure it’s appropriate and that people will care about it. And you’d be surprised at how much people really care about your personal life.
80/20 is fantastic. I’m definitely trying to keep it within those boundaries, because nobody cares about my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and how delicious it was.
AP:
Exactly.
In my diagnoses of a lot of musicians’ businesses and digital presence, I find there isn’t a lot of cohesiveness between the different social media pages and the website. Do you advocate any one of these places being the ultimate destination? How do all these different areas destinations work together to create a unified front?
AP:
I have a few thoughts on that. The short answer is, I think your website should always be your hub, because you own that. Facebook, although it’s very unlikely, could go away tomorrow. Facebook just made a huge number of changes recently. And maybe some changes that come up might work against your business one day, and you might not want to use Facebook as your hub. You can’t control these other sites. They could technically take away any of them at any time. So, make your website your hub at all times.
However, I do believe there’s a way to pull quality leads to your website, and I think you need social media these days to do that. What I say is, choose social media sites where your audience is truly spending time. That might mean one or two sites, or it might mean four or five. You have to do a little detective work and find out what your audience wants, needs and where they’re spending their time online. Usually Facebook is a safe bet, with over 800 million users, and 50% of those people getting online almost daily. It’s pretty safe to say your audience is on Facebook. And if that is true, you should amek Facebook your network hub. Facebook is where you can get the conversation started. On my website, I post blogs regularly and I interact with people. But I can’t get that same relationship building and interaction on my website as I can on Facebook. People are on Facebook to chat, have fun and interact with me on a different level than they are on my website. I don’t own Facebook, so people don’t feel threatened that I’m going to push things on them or try to sell things. It’s a safe environment.
You can build relationships on a daily basis on Facebook and continually be active about driving traffic to your website, whether you promise freebies or point people to valuable content on your blog. Then you tease them with really great stuff to get them to step outside Facebook and visit you on your regular website. That’s the strategy I use with Facebook and my website specifically.
I’ve been blogging two, to three times per week for several years. And I know musicians have the same issues I do, which is that they have a hard time not making it all about “Me, Me, Me, Me … buy my stuff.” What do you advise people to do when they get writer’s block? It can be really difficult to come up with quality content. How can they generate good content and communicate their enthusiasm about their area of expertise, which in the case of musicians, would be their own music?
AP:
I think anybody in any industry definitely can run into writer’s block, or thinking their ideas aren’t important enough or interesting enough to keep writing about. You’ve been blogging for so long that you probably have gotten into a habit, and have gotten really good at it as time goes by. So, some quick tips for that:
First, I keep a Google doc. And every time an idea comes into my head, I jot it down in that Google doc. And I’m always online, on my computer or on my phone, somewhere I can access it. I just keep a running list. At first when I did this, I would just write two or three lines about an idea. And when I came back to it a week later, it meant nothing to me. And I wasn’t really charged or passionate about it. So, I started writing three, four or five lines about my thoughts in that moment. Be a little bit more detailed when you get an idea, so when you come back to it, you’re going to continue to be passionate about it.
Another thing is, I have noticed that I have to make a conscious effort to step outside my niche to get topics to blog about. And this is silly, but I love Real Housewives of New York. It’s completely trashy and has nothing to do with my niche or my market. But there’s always something on that show that will spark my creativity and get me thinking about things in a different way. And somehow I know it fuels me to make really great ideas about blog posts. The same goes for books and magazines I read completely unrelated to my niche. Don’t be afraid to step outside your niche so you can get fresh ideas for things to write about. Innovation comes when you’re able to be a little bit more lenient about your market and see things in a different way.
And the third tip for getting ideas is, look at what other people are doing. I’m a huge advocate of modeling the best. I don’t think you need to reinvent the wheel. I learned this tip from Tony Robbins: Go out and find who is doing it right. Who do you love to follow? Who does your audience love to follow? And what are they doing? How can you take their principles and strategies and model and shape it so it fits your personality and what you love to do? So, if this person writes a really great blog post, you shouldn’t copy it. But, think about how you can take those concepts and shape them into your own ideas. I get a lot of fuel from people in my industry that I respect and trust. Model the best, and don’t reinvent the wheel. That will take the pressure off having to worry about what you blog about on a regular basis.
To find out what about Amy and get a free chapter of her book Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, visit the Amy Porterfield website. You can also check her out on Facebook.
Jimmy Roc is the Music Evangelist at MySpace Music (Yes, it says so on his business card). Prior to being at MySpace Music Jimmy was a DJ at WAAF in Boston for four years and a musician prior to that. I wanted to talk to Jimmy about what was going on at MySpace given they have recently announced new customizable music profiles and launched a blog dedicated to helping musicians called Artist HQ.
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Jimmy, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. Let’s start by discussing a bit about what you did at radio. How often were you on and how much control did you have over what you played on the air as a DJ?
JR:
I was on five, to six nights a week and had a six-hour block. It was good, but I had absolutely no control over playlists.
I think people have a big misconception that your average DJ can control what gets played where, and that’s just not true.
JR:
That’s what led to my decision to leave. They’ve taken the art out of Radio. Unless you’re on a morning show, your ability to free-form what you want to do and say has been taken away in modern FM radio. If you listen to any FM station around the country, you’ll hear a DJ back-selling a song: “That was that, and this coming up is this” and that is the whole gig. To me, that wasn’t worth saying, “I’m on the radio.” I felt like I was reading lines. If I broke away from a very rigid format I would find myself in the program director’s office on a Monday morning getting yelled at. It became a little difficult. Pretty much no matter where you go in the country or which shift you listen to, most DJs don’t have control over which songs they’re playing.
So you landed at MySpace next?
JR:
Yes, I was picked up by MySpace Music in 2006.
Music Consultant: What do you do as a Music Evangelist?
JR:
I spread the good word of MySpace and help artists at all stages in their careers – though my focus is really on the unsigned artist and helping indies get the most out of their MySpace and online experience.
So it sounds like you do a fair share of showing people how to use MySpace to maximize their music and their career using it as a tool…
JR:
Right on the money. I want to help any way I can to help an artist get where they want to be. And hopefully when they’re on the top of that mountain, they will look back and say, “MySpace did some good stuff for me.” That’s what we’re trying to do.
Before we get into artist HQ, tell me about what’s going on with the new profiles?
JR:
We’re giving artists a new platform. It’s a lot simpler to navigate than the old profiles. We have a fixed navigation box on the left side. In the past, you would visit an artist’s profile, and you couldn’t even find the “add” button, because they have so many graphics on the page or everything is all over the place. We fixed that box so you can get to an artist’s page and quickly navigate to their music, their videos or any events they have, their blog. That’s all right there. In addition to that, the overall profile is a sleeker design. You have the ability to keep a large banner marquis. The way we designed it is as an expandable marquis, so you have the option to start off with a 960×240 pixel size, but you hit a button and you can expand it. A lot of artists are getting really creative with that and are putting videos there and links to their online stores. To date we’re pushing 700,000 artists that are now on the new artist profile.
So I was told that all artist profiles are going to roll over into the new 2.0 whether they are updated or not at a certain date, is that so?
JR:
No decision has been made as far as a forced migration is concerned. But I recommend that if artists are spending time tricking out an old profile, it’s probably going to be a waste of their time. I say get on the new platform. We’re showing a lot of love to artists that are doing it. We rolled it out last summer as a “friends and family” invite only thing to get feedback, and then once the beta rolled out, artists are coming back to us and asking us to check out their profiles. The feedback has been amazing. On artists’ HQ, we actually feature an artist profile of the day. The major label artists have in-house designers that are doing amazing things. But the independent and unsigned artists are doing it themselves or hiring independent designers and coming up with some beautiful stuff. We’re trying to showcase those on the site.
I know many people believe the platform is in decline, but I’d love to hear recent success stories. When I am on MySpace I feel like I am so inundated with bands saying, “Look at me, look at me.” What should artists be doing on MySpace in this day and age to advance their careers?
JR:
I would take advantage of the tools we have to offer. A lot of bands are not as active on MySpace, but they set up their Twitter sync. So they can simply update their Twitter status and have more presence on MySpace. It’s good for time management. What I would do if I had a band is make sure anything I had up online is the best representation of the message I’m trying to put across: keeping the photos recent; making it a place where you can showcase new music. Even if you’re bigger on Facebook or Twitter, use the status updates and the feeds to say that you have a new song up on MySpace. And then just tell people to go there and check out the new music.
If you’re going to be interacting with fans elsewhere, that’s fine. Of course, we’d like your first stop to be MySpace, but if it’s not, we still have a lot of assets that aren’t available elsewhere that you can make the most of, such as the music player, the video gallery and the photo gallery. There’s nowhere else right now where you can put a huge 960×99 photo of yourself at the top of the page and have your name in lights for free.
Is there ever going to be Ustream integration?
JR:
Unfortunately I can’t speak on that right now. There has been discussion about it though. We have a lot of tricks up our sleeves that will be rolling out soon. And I’ll say this, a lot of the new products we’ve been showing to bands when they’ve come in one-on-one have been getting great results. It makes me feel really confident about the future of the music site.
Which bands are really using the platform well? Are there bands that are really actively working MySpace that you would recommend as powers of example?
JR:
This band called Mary Madeline is in the unsigned artist program. They are pushing 260,000 friends and have a very interesting rap/rock, what they call “hood rock” fusion. It’s definitely a rock band, but they take the hip hop route and are calling them mix tapes. They choose MySpace first to showcase their stuff. They are doing exceptionally well for an unsigned band. They are self-funding coast-to-coast tours and selling tons of merch. Their traffic all originates with their MySpace profile.
When I see an artist that has 250,000 friends I start to question if it is real or not. I know a lot of people are using bots. I always recommend against this practice, because I’m a big quality over quantity guy. What has been your experience with people inflating their numbers and auto adds? I know it’s been a technology war between MySpace and people developing new ways of auto-friending. Do you have any experience with that at all?
JR:
We cracked down on that. If we find an artist that is cheating, they will be banned from the charts. If they continue to cheat, their profile runs the risk of being removed. We try to keep the quality aspect in play. We want the best we showcase to be the best and be legit.
The quality of the music usually speaks for itself. If you’re putting out quality work, the fans will come. For instance, this band Mary Madeline has been on the site since it began, and they’ve just been pushing hard. If you look across the board at any of their networking sites – even their YouTube account – they have good numbers across the board. In house, we have so many things in place now as far as security features and spam features, it’s really hard to run a successful bot anymore. I f you don’t have it set right, you will be banned from sending messages and banned from friending. It’s a system that is really strict, and a lot of times a band will write in and say, “I was sending individual messages to people, what happened? Because it’s based on rate and how many messages are being sent to people. Most likely, if somebody is using a bot at this time on MySpace, it’s not going to be successful. If you see an artist with big numbers, I’m going to say nine times out of ten, they are going to be legit.
You were about to get into the MySpace Unsigned profile. What is that?
JR:
MySpace has a program currently called the “friends and family” program. Possibly that name will change soon. We just revamped the program – Dave Andreone of MySpace Records and I. We’re running that with 140 artists, and we’re hopefully going to double that in the next six months. Some of the benefits you get from being in the program: any album you get released or video or EP, we get you featured on the site, as well as a really generous ad campaign package. Then we look out for those artists first as far as opportunities that come up. For instance, we had a sales campaign with Wendy’s where they wanted to know what unsigned artists do in the meantime until they make it. What is their day job all about like while they are waiting? We reached out to artists in the program, they hit us back, and Wendy’s made the final decision and picked three artists and gave each of them $10,000 and did a three- part webisode showcasing how they balance having a real job and being in a band. The bands were psyched.
We really look out for our artists first and with the new revamp of the program, we’re going to roll out a whole new profile, so we can almost put the A&R in the hands of the fan. There will be a submission process. If there’s a band out there that we need to know about that would make a good fit into this program, we need to know. Out of six million MySpace music profiles online right now, this is an extremely small percentage of that. We’re trying to curate it and make it the best of the best, the best 300. All we ask for in return is a first right of refusal. We show you a lot of love, so if you get a deal, you sign something that says we have ten days to match that deal. And it would be either through Interscope or Downtown Records that we recently partnered with. Some bands – unfortunately no household names – have signed to smaller labels and graduated from the program. Everything Everything is a band in the UK who are a good Example. They are doing big things right now. We’re hoping the new revamp of the program will take it to new levels.
Let’s get into artist HQ. When and why did that come about, and what is it?
JR:
Artist HQ is the number one resource on MySpace for artists, musicians and bands. It came about approximately two months ago. I am responsible for hosting most of the content on the actual profile. It came about because there is no guide or manual about how to succeed in rock and roll. There are a lot of horror stories and a lot of “would’ve, could’ve, should’ves, and a lot of bad things in the music industry. We’re trying to create a place on MySpace where artists can go and get advice to help further their career, whether they are doing it for the love of it or want it to pay their rent someday. If you’re new to MySpace, we’ll show you everything from how to upload a photo or a song, to how to customize your profile, and then we’ll take it to the other side and have columns from music managers and producers and lawyers and other music professionals that have seen a lot of things and can offer expertise.
Is it going to remain as an advice column, or will it grow into more thatn that?
JR:
As new tools roll out – and there will be a lot of things in late 2010 and early 2011 – this will be the place to get all the information you need to use the new tools to the best of your ability. We’re getting guest columns from bands that have made it. For example, there’s a band called In This Moment. They were a band on MySpace in 2006. There was an era if you had 100,000 friends, there was a good chance a label was going to look at you. And this band, since they’ve been signed to Century Media, has been on every tour possible, whether Mayhem Fest, Ozfest, a really talented bunch of guys and an exceptionally beautiful front woman that can scream like Randy Blythe of Lamb of God. The girl’s amazing. I hit them up and said, “You guys had a lot of success on MySpace. Do you want to come back and write an article?” I gave them free reign to do whatever they wanted. It’s called “From Van to Tour Bus: Surviving Touring in a Metal Band.” And Chris Howorth, the guitar player, touches on everything from packing light to making sure to be nice to the fans, Gold Bond powder, everything you need to make it through a summer tour. It’s been one of our most popular articles to date.
For More information on best business practices on MySpace check in with Artist HQ.
Ted Cohen has had a long and colorful career in the music business. He started out managing artists in high school and putting on shows in college, worked in Artist Development at Warner Brothers and worked with artist such as Prince, Van Halen and Fleetwood Mac (among many others). His interest in technology and music led him to become SVP of Digital Development at EMI Music, which meant it was his job to source out what new technologies could be used by the company to help break their artists. In 2006 Ted left EMI to start his own company TAG strategic. TAG is a company that consults technology companies on how best to use media and content to their advantage. Ted recently began managing an artist named Sara Haze and upon hearing this I knew I had to ask him some questions about what his plans were for breaking Sara given the tools that were likely to be available to him.
Ted, thanks for your time. With TAG Strategic being the kind of entertainment and technology based firm that it is and you being a guy that has an interesting world view because of your background tell me a bit about your career and why / how you started managing Sara?
TC:
It brings me around full circle. I started out managing bands in high school. To date myself, I managed Eric Carmen, who was a member of the Raspberries. I managed his band in high school, which was known at the time as the Sounds of Silence. I started out with the fun of figuring out how you get a band discovered and build a career. Then I ended up at Warner Brothers in artist development helping bands like Talking Heads, Van Halen and Prince, who are now all household names, but were at the time what I refer to as “station wagon tours.” The first Van Halen tour was a station wagon tour, then it moved to a tour bus, then it moved to a plane. It was the same thing with Fleetwood Mac and Talking Heads. You think of Fleetwood Mac as this major, major act. I remember driving across Pennsylvania through Maryland into New York with them with two station wagons and an equipment truck. That led into getting involved in technology in the late 80’s and seeing that through to the mid 90’s. And then I got back into working with music as it related to technology.
In 1991, I managed a rock artist, David Robyn. I worked with David for about two years until the band broke up. David was a really good songwriter and performer, and we stayed friends over the years. That was literally about 17 years ago, and last year at Canadian Music Week in Toronto, which is a great conference I go to every year, I came up behind this girl playing piano. She sounded amazing, and I stood there for two or three minutes listening to her. She was on the piano bench, and there was a guy sitting next to her playing acoustic guitar and singing harmony with her. I walked around the front of the piano to see what she looked like, and sitting next to her was David, my former client. He started saying, “This is Sara! This is who I’ve been telling you about!” And I said, “Wow,” she was brilliant. He called me a few weeks later, and asked if I would come out to see her. I went to see her a couple times and thought she was really, really good. David asked me to get involved, I quickly agreed. We started working together. I was going to do the digital side of her career. It became clear by early April that while there was a lot of interest from labels – there were serious discussions from Universal, Warner Music Group – nothing was going to close before mid-year 2009.
We came to the realization that if we didn’t get a deal in place by the First of July, we probably weren’t going to get any music out this year. So Sara, Dave and I made a mutual decision that if July 1 came and went and there wasn’t a signed deal to get a record out by October, we would do it ourselves. We hit the ground running!
Over the years – I’ve worked at Warner Records, I worked for the legendary artist manager Sandy Gallin, who managed Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson, the Osmonds and the Pointer Sisters, among others, and I worked Philips Electronics. This gave me experience at a label, in management and technology. David had been an artist, a songwriter and had worked with other acts; he has a great work ethic. We started planning for the November 3rd release, and we decided to go digital-only through the end of the year. We’re going to put out a physical release sometime in early January or February. We’re working with all the online services – Amazon and iTunes, etc. – so the music is out there. We found a great digital distributor by the name of BFM, which stands for Big Fish Media, led by a guy named Steve Corn, who is an old friend that stepped up and thrown a lot of resources into making this happen. We’re into the first week. I have 3700 friends on Facebook and posted last week that the music was up and available. I got back dozens of replies from friends that had gone to her site and listened to it. They’re hearing what I’ve been hearing from the first time I heard her. She’s an amazing artist. And for me, it really does give me the opportunity to put my actions where my mouth has been for the last ten years, that we’ve been coming to this tipping point where you don’t need to have a major label, provided you have the right resources, use what’s out there and have the right team.
As an executive who has met with and evaluated so many technologies, what are some of the staples in artist development in your opinion?
TC:
Initially, a company called TheVirtualCD.com. I met with Mitch Tobin who runs the service in New York, and he showed me everything they were doing. It’s a great tool. We are also working with Ian Rogers’ new company Top Spin, ReverbNation, Ariel Hyatt- the best digital publicist in the world and, as I stated, we are working with Big Fish Digital.
There are a few other companies we haven’t announced yet that we’re doing business with. I’m basically either calling in every consideration that I have from companies that I’ve worked with for years, or creating new indebtedness with everyone I know and saying, “The music is there. I’m looking for your attention.” If the music was weak, I would say I was asking for favors, but the music is good and speaks for itself. Now we’re in a world where thousands of new songs come out daily. We have this great level playing field now. Anyone can get distribution. We could take this call that you’ve recorded and post it on iTunes, make it for sale as a Podcast and people would buy it. But you and I would have to promote it; otherwise it would just sit there as a podcast in the iTunes catalogue. The challenge these days is not about getting distribution. It’s about letting people know your music is out there and rising above this great level playing field that’s been created.
Talent aside, what is your advice for an upcoming artist trying to rise up?
TC:
You have to be everywhere. As an example, there’s another artist I probably will be working with named Emily Jaye that David is also managing. I went to see Sara one night at a club in L.A. called the Mint, and Emily was opening for her. She had a lot of great songs, but one was, “I’m not a bitch, I just don’t like you.” The lyric is great, and it catches you right away. We were passing around a mailing list, so I put my name on the mailing list. The next morning at eight or nine o’clock in the morning, I got an e-mail from Emily saying, “Thanks for joining my list.” It wouldn’t have meant as much a week later. Getting it at nine the next morning after I’d been at breakfast telling someone about being there the night before made a big difference, and I became a big fan. It’s not just about collecting e-mails. I was impressed with her work ethic. She was very talented on stage, but she was also making a big effort to build her band list up and make contact. I get e-mails from her at least two or three times a week. It rises above the noise. She got me to notice her.
There are a lot of DIY or self-help tools out there. Ian Rogers has done a great thing with Top Spin giving ways to build up your following using digital tools. Ariel Hyatt with Cyber PR has a book and a whole process on her website to help you build up you profile.
The interesting thing for most artists these days – it’s fun to watch – is you run out of people to blame. The artist used to say, “I did really well, but my manager blew it” or “I did really well, but my label blew it.” Most times now the independent artist is their own manager and their own label. When it gets screwed up, you need to have a mirror in front of you. You have all these opportunities and this ability to get noticed. Take advantage of it. I feel the pressure every day, because opportunities come up, and I have somebody that wrote me last night about something this morning. Luckily he gave me an out, and he said, “We can either do it tomorrow or Tuesday, let me know.” There is pressure not to squander opportunity. Getting back to people right away, managing your mailing list, capitalizing on your mailing list, finding that balance between too much information and maintaining that contact that your fans know you care about them. It’s an honest relationship.
I did a Twitter panel a few months ago in New York with a rap artist Jim Jones, who was talking about another artist and how he had abused his Twitter following by acquiring 300,000-400,000 people to follow him on Twitter. He started using Twitter to say, “Buy my record” and “Vote for me on E-Bay.” Every call to action was, “Have you bought my record?” and “Have you done such and such?” People started dropping off in massive quantities because he violated the relationship between him and his fan base.
Look at all the tools that are out there, use the ones that help you maintain an organic, honest interaction with your fans, listen to your fans’ feedback, reward them where you can. We’re doing a promotion with Sara beginning soon called, “30 Days of Sara Haze.” Most of the prizing is not your traditional record company prizes for contests. The content is event oriented – go bowling with Sara, have Thanksgiving dinner with Sara, attend a webcast, watch a webcam in the dressing room at her date next week, etc. It’s going to create virtual experiences.
When do you think an artist is ready to give of themselves in that way to a fan base?
TC:
I think you do it early on. You try to have as much contact with your fans as possible and invite some of them to a sound check or an after show. The challenge is when you give people real access as opposed to virtual access, you have to make sure you know who you’re dealing with. In most cases, your fans are just fans and nothing more. One of the realities of social media is that when someone is your friend on Facebook, sometimes that person believes they’re really your friend as opposed to someone that is part of your world or just an acquaintance. I have that in my personal life. You try to be a little discerning about it, but when it comes to fans on your Facebook or Myspace page, you have to make things available to them and every once in a while doing select things that connect with your audience in the physical world while still being careful.
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Learn more about Ted and his Company TAG Strategic or check out his management client, Sara Haze.
Lou Plaia is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Industry Relations for ReverbNation. I know Lou from my days at Lava / Atlantic where Lou was the head of Marketing prior to starting ReverbNation.
Musician Coaching:
Why and how did you start ReverbNation?
LP:
We pretty much started ReverbNation based on all the stuff we were seeing that was going on out in the music space about three and a half years ago. MySpace was growing like crazy and not allowing artists to take full control of a lot of things; artists were not able to extract a lot of things or see who their fans were. So we wanted to create a non-fan destination site, a marketing software platform to give artists marketing tools to get their music out there, syndicate their content everywhere and try to funnel in fans to the fan management system we also provide. We have 485,000 artists and are growing at about 20,000 per month. We also have 15,000-20,000 managers, labels and “other industry professionals” – anything from publicists to third-party marketing companies.
Musician Coaching:
What are the most popular widgets that you have right now?
LP:
One of the most popular is Tune Widget. It’s basically like a “Website in a box.” It puts everything on your ReverbNation profile in one nice widget so people can see information about you, your shows, your store, they can join your mailing list and share it with their friends. It’s got your music, your videos, your press, pretty much everything on a profile all in a widget form. And you can post that anywhere on the social networking sites. It’s just html that you can post anywhere. Our Show Widget is probably our second most popular, and that’s another widget you can put anywhere. We try to be the home base of everything for an artist. So artists can upload all their shows into their ReverbNation profile or enter them one-by-one and take the widget and copy and paste the code anywhere on their own Websites. Anytime a show is added to their ReverbNation profile or edited it automatically gets added everywhere else that widget lives. So it saves you a lot of time and effort. You put your shows up once on our site and it posts everywhere else. We also have feeds from Live Nation, Jam Base and Eventful. So if your shows are already posted on any of those sites they automatically come up into Reverb and vice versa. So if you’re on ReverbNation, those sites automatically post out to those other venues as well.
Musician Coaching:
What is the community like on ReverbNation? How has it developed, and are there success stories?
LP:
It’s mostly used for tools. We have 480,000 artists, but I think maybe people log in every couple days or once per week. A lot of times there’s really no need, once you’ve posted your widgets, to constantly go to your Reverb Page unless you want to update songs or videos or send e-mails. We have one of the largest e-mail management systems. It is called Fanreach. We have 110,000 artists using it right now.
Musician Coaching:
Tell me about the newer tools that you have released…
LP:
A lot of artists don’t have their own websites, and we kind of believe you shouldn’t just have a MySpace page, but a lot of artists use MySpace as their official page. So we said, “Let’s see if they want to create their own website.” And we give them a tool called Sitebuilder to do that. We partnered with a company called Bandzoogle, and when artists sign up to their ReverbNation page for free, the first thing we say is, “Do you want your own website” and “Do you want your own domain name?” There is a service charge for that, because it’s one of the premium services. It’s $18 per month. We give you a Web site, templates and host it for you. We launched Sitebuilder a couple months ago. We also have the number one artist application on Facebook called MyBand. We have a million active users as of last week.
Musician Coaching:
You also do digital distribution for artists. How does that work?
LP:
It’s $35 per year per release – and a release can be an album or one song, and most people put up an album, but if you’re also putting up one song it’s also $35. We take no commission, and basically your music is up on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody an E-Music.
Musician Coaching:
What’s the turnaround time on that?
LP:
It’s really up to the retailer, but it’s currently six to eight weeks.
Musician Coaching:
I heard some rumblings about artist insurance. What’s that about?
LP:
That’s something new. We haven’t even announced it publicly yet. We did a study and found out that 50% of the artists in the U.S. don’t have any type of health insurance. So we partnered with E-Health insurance. You go to the ReverbNation site and you can get a free quote on family coverage, individual, small business, short term, student coverage, all sorts of things. You just plug in your zip code and you get a free quote. It’s live right now.
Musician Coaching:
Where do you see this site heading?
LP:
We just launched direct-to-fan commerce –selling directly to your fans. It’s in beta right now to a couple thousand artists.
Musician Coaching:
Cutting out the middle man is better for the artist in terms of splits. What’s the challenge in doing that? Do you think that will be the future or that people will still have to have some sort of shopping experience?
LP:
I don’t think it’s the end all, and I think people will still go to iTunes and Amazon because they’re credit card’s there, they’re comfortable there. But in some cases people want to buy directly from the artist. Doing it this way, our direct-to-fan commerce engine is integrated into all the marketing tools and artist gets. So if they’re sending out an e-mail to their fans about anything, they will have their own store with images of their t-shirts, their CD, etc. There’s a widget for that too. The main function of it is as an on-demand system. So it’s really good for the smaller artist, because if they don’t have money to invest in a thousand or two thousand CD’s or a couple hundred t-shirts, they upload their image for their t-shirt and CD or digital goods. Basically, if somebody buys something, we make it for them immediately and ship it out for the artist. There’s no investment for the artist at all. You can basically start selling t-shirts at no cost at all. It’s a little different from a lot of people. If you want to buy bulk, you can do that, and we’ll just warehouse it and fulfill it for you. We’re doing pretty much everything right now.
Musician Coaching:
Do you have any success stories?
LP:
We’re such an analytical bunch of geeks. There is a band called the Clintons from Montana. Recently, they took the data they got from their ReverbNation stats component and took it to a brand – Jim Beam – and said to them, “Listen, we want sponsorship for a tour.” And Jim Beam probably said, “Yeah, so does everybody.” And the band said, “Yes, but look what we have.” And they showed them all the fans they have, where they’re located, their age, their sex, and it was totally aligned with what Jim Beam was looking for. These are real fans on a mailing list. These aren’t friends and things like that. These are real fans you can engage with. That’s all the brand wanted – to engage with fans. They did it all on their own with their own press release. They had our data and called us and thanked us.
Musician Coaching:
Do you have any general advice for artists?
LP:
Have your own website. I know a lot of bands don’t, and a lot of bands can’t afford it. But if you’re using a social network as your own website you have no control over it. They can tell you what store to use, what you can be doing. And they’re not giving you all the data you need to understand your fans. None of them allow you to really e-mail your fans. And I think e-mail is still really important. Everything leads to an e-mail. People still go to their inboxes, even with Twitter and everything else. Use the technology that companies like us offer and use it to understand your fans, because it makes it easier to market to your fans if you understand them.
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If you aren’t already familiar with the site, check out Reverbnation.
Frank Hajdu, VP Business Development, Myspace Music
I recently sat down with Frank Hajdu, an old colleague of mine from the Elektra Records A&R team and now the VP of Business Development for MySpace Music. As a founding member of the MySpace Music team, Frank offered an inside look at the past, present, and future of MySpace’s core content platform.
Give me the quick elevator pitch on what Myspace Music is all about and how it came to be.
FH:
From its inception, MySpace was always a promotional haven for artists of all types – musicians, filmmakers, comedians, fashionistas – you name it. Over time, music became more of a focal point within MySpace, as it started to gain quite a bit of traction with unsigned, indie, and major label artists. Before long, it became an integral part of the marketing plan for virtually any artist, big or small. But despite its efficacy as a promotional platform, artists began to clamor for a means of monetizing their MySpace content in the face of a recorded music industry in rapid decline. Wanting to better serve its artist community, there was a major push from within MySpace to figure out how to do just that – we had the traffic, but now it was a matter of converting those eyeballs into monetization opportunities and allowing artists, to the greatest extent possible, to run their respective businesses via their MySpace profiles.
We became laser-focused on how to achieve that end goal, and the MySpace Music business and product architecture began to take shape. Artists were already uploading promotional content and users were becoming accustomed to a great breadth of streamable audio and video, and we wanted to create an ad-supported environment where artists could actually make money from this streaming activity. In addition, we wanted to create appropriate up-sell opportunities for artists’ digital and physical goods, including digital downloads, albums, and ringtones, as well as artist’s high-margin items such as tickets and merchandise. We ultimately envisioned a music marketplace within our environment allowing users to not just consume, but also purchase and take portable virtually all of the content that they were finding on the site. We certainly recognized – and still recognize – the magnitude and complexity of creating a scalable one-stop shop. I’m proud to say we’ve made great strides in this regard, but certainly acknowledge that there’s still a ways to go.
The official launch of the MySpace Music joint venture took place on September 25, 2008, and it’s been an iterative process ever since. It was and still is a very, very grand ambition to be able to satiate all artists’ needs as far as creating ancillary revenue streams to all relevant content and physical wares, but we’re doing it steadily. We’ve licensed and currently monetize several million audio tracks and videos from major, indie, and unsigned artists. We’re also up-selling digital and physical goods by way of our partnerships with iTunes, Amazon, Ticketmaster, Live Nation, and Hot Topic, to name a few.
I know you’re one of the original founders of MySpace Music, but what is your role there?
FH:
As Vice President of Business Development, I’m responsible for a fairly wide scope of partnerships and internal development. The structuring of commercial relationships with external partners is core to my job, whether that’s content licensing, technology partnerships, e-commerce partnerships, M&A – the list goes on. But aside from the transactional, if MySpace Music is contemplating an entirely new line of business, my team handles a great deal of the strategy and analysis that dictates our decision to make a category entrance. Finally, there’s the internal business development piece, where we look to formulate (or reformulate) strategy and operations within. To be candid, there are very few gold standards and rules of thumb in the business of digital media, so we are constantly monitoring and re-tooling our systems to improve the efficiency and profitability of the operation.
Is it too much of a gross over-simplification of your role to state that you are looking for ways to help the artists make money both from their recorded and external streams by creating things on site and partnerships with existing technologies off site?
FH:
Probably an over-simplification, yes. But if you’re asking me to articulate MySpace Music’s pledge to the artist community, monetization is really only one part of it. At the end of the day, for many established artists and labels, it often comes down to “Where’s my check?” — we get that. At the same time, what’s really interesting – though obvious in retrospect — is that when you talk to unsigned artists, it’s exposure, not money, which they consistently mention first and foremost. I’m blown away on a daily basis at just how business-savvy and self-sufficient artists are becoming in their day-to-day business affairs and marketing. I’m seeing a deepening maturity and patience, especially in unsigned artists, who are far more keen to first build a relevant audience, with the understanding that the money will ultimately be the by-product of that. So when you ask, “Is MySpace Music trying to build an ecosystem for artists to make money?” Sure, but it’s more than that. It’s, “How do we help break artists — at any level – such that they’ll prosper both inside and outside of MySpace, period?”
So part of your job is to facilitate the tools that help the growth and monetization of artists’ revenue streams. Are these tools available to the unsigned artist yet?
FH:
The end goal is that every single artist, signed or otherwise, has access to every promotional and monetization tool. Obviously the promotional tools are available across the board, as are the data retrieval tools such as the freshly-launched Artist Dashboard. As far as monetization tools go, we’re working in earnest to create scalable platforms to allow all artists to participate across all business lines. Suffice it to say, it gets very, very complicated, mainly because we rarely handle sales fulfillment in-house and for certain business lines like ticketing and merchandise, the pool of vendors is hugely fragmented. But artists have always been able to market their wares via affiliate linkage from their profiles, and we’ve recently inked soon-to-be-announced deals with pay-to-play aggregators to help solve for the digital distribution bottleneck. Artists will be able to sign up with said aggregators and present their digital content available for sale through MySpace media players by way of our e-commerce relationships.
From your vantage point, what can you say the real marketing push on MySpace (for an artist) is like? How has it changed?
FH:
There are more stories than I can count of artists like Sean Kingston or Asher Roth who wound up meeting their managers, producers, or label reps by reaching out via MySpace. And while artists still do their fair share of mass communication, they’re consistently using MySpace to reach out to potential colleagues and new fans on a one-to-one basis with much more meaningful and personalized messaging. The smartest ones realize that the quality of connections, at least in the earlygoing, is more important than the quantity, and so they take the time to identify users with tastes similar to that of their content. They then reach out directly to explain why said users might be interested in their music. It’s less of a general, “Hey, check me out!”, and instead more of a, “I noticed you like artists X, Y, and Z, and my music is in a similar vein. If you have a second, have a listen.” Those are really important friend requests, as the recipient is far more likely to explore the music if there’s a thoughtful basis for the recommendation.
Are there areas in an artist’s life that you think are at the moment underserved and will be better served by what’s coming?
FH:
One of the most recurrent themes in the feedback we get from artists is that it’s difficult having to maintain an online presence in so many different places. Currently, the average artist maintains profiles on anywhere from 3-10 websites …
I call it being in the phone book. The problem with the internet is that there are about 7,000 phone books.
FH:
Absolutely. For the artist, it’s exhausting. We feel that the concept of posting once and publishing everywhere is absolutely crucial for the artists of today. The concept is starting to proliferate, though most implementations I’ve seen are still a bit clunky and have yet to be headquartered in one simple, consolidated place. We’re going to get there. In the meantime, my advice to artists is not to get too overwhelmed with maintaining a presence on every site imaginable. Focus on the 2-3 most significant sites and go deep. I’d argue that you’re actually better served by having a more meaningful, dynamic, and frequently-updated presence in those places than by spreading yourself too thin.
You’re looking into solutions that would essentially let you be everywhere at once.
FH:
Yes. One great example is the recent MySpace–Twitter implementation. Updating your MySpace status immediately posts to Twitter and vice versa. This is certainly not the first such implementation we’ve seen, but it’s that kind of thinking that will prove incredibly valuable artists. It could be as simple as updating all your information in one place and completing the checkboxes for your syndication destinations.
Any advice for artists to effectively use MySpace?
FH:
Keep it simple. Artists often have a tendency to take the customizable canvas of MySpace and turn it into something very visually loud. Sometimes this works, often it doesn’t. Implementations range from gorgeous and elegant to discombobulated and seizure-inducing. One of the reasons that platforms like MySpace can work so well for marketing artists is that generally speaking, the profiles follow a template. One visits a MySpace profile, he knows where the audio lives, where the video lives, the photos, the blogs, and so on – there’s little to no learning curve for the visitor as he peruses each new artist profile. But when profile hosts attempt to go overboard with custom design, it can obscure the landscape, make the content less accessible, and altogether frustrate the visitor. Color and character are great – but I’d advise not to alter the skeletal landscape much. Decorate the house, but don’t reposition the furniture.
Above all else, users want ease and simplicity – they don’t want to relearn a web environment, which is why aggregated artist sites garner so much more traffic than artist-specific sites. This will sound ridiculously self-serving, but as a matter of pure ROI, I implore artists not to overspend time, money, or resources on their official sites. We’ve done the research and have seen that an artist’s MySpace profile traffic is typically 5-10x that of their official websites, even in cases where the official sites are cleaner, prettier, or more technologically advanced. Aggregated sites simply yield far greater bang for the buck, so you tell me where you want to invest your time.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t quickly plug MySpace’s “MyAds” platform. We’ve been very pleasantly surprised by how much artists have been using this. While I’m not permitted to quote numbers, an extremely significant percentage of MyAds clients are artists looking to market themselves within MySpace, and they’re seeing incredible returns. Even for those with meager budgets, artists can effectively target themselves at users throughout MySpace based on hundreds of demographic and psychographic dimensions. It’s surpassed every expectation we had as far as how much business that’s driving and how much of this business is coming from artists.
