Market and Manage your music online

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Kurb Online Promotion Management Packages - New Music Marketing Artist Community -
Music Marketing Management Blog - Youtube Video Promotion

Kurb Online Promotion Management Packages - New Music Marketing Artist Community -
Music Marketing Management Blog - Youtube Video Promotion

Is the album dead? @ New Music Strategies: Meet the Music “Content Product”

by Matt @ Kurb on August 26, 2008

http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/08/21/is-the-album-dead/

@dubber over at http://newmusicstrategies.com asked if the album was dead.

And I said put it in the ground, and called out for the “content product” to take over.

@powerweirdo aka Julian Boland at http://audiblehype.com asked me if I had more details and I guess that’s when I realised the conceptualisation of the “content product” was more of an anti statement than anything else, but it was meant to loosen up thought around how digital content will be provided to fans/users for retail or otherwise.

In the internet marketing field, there is a concept known as the “information product”. Again this term really just serves to illustrate that you can use information as a digital commodity – whether that information is delivered as text (an ebook), audio or a podcast, or video . . . and you can leverage it otherwise, one of the most popular internet marketing techniques is to use the free download of the ebook or “information product” to secure voluntary email addresses from which to build the marketer’s “list” - Users who have opted in to receive mail on continuing offers from the marketer.

Being these techniques are the cornerstone of modern internet marketing and that as music moves to the internet, I’m seeking to apply those ideas that already have traction in internet marketing appropriate ways to musicians effort to monteize and build revenue, I was quick to analyse how a musicians content fits into this model and the concept of the “content product”.

As I’ve said before on this blog, the last time I saw the rule book it was flying out the window, you need to know what you’re doing and why before you go chasing some traditional concept of how the music industry should be.

From my discussion of the “digital revolution” during my talk I did start to figure a few things.

It’s the distinct lack of successful new strategies that is allowing the old album model, that most accept cant last, to continue. The moment a new model can be proven to generate superior revenue, the album as we knew it is toast.

The quantities that make up the concept of the album have been set by technological and economic constraints, in the era of the LP the album was born as they were able to fit up to 23 minutes on each side of a vinyl. With a CD that increased to 74, and then 80 minutes.

But now we’re in a digital network, hard drive to server to hard drive, technology and economy are less of a constraint to access and quantity, and as media converges, rather than media that separates the formats (video is for seeing, music is for hearing, software is for using, words are for reading etc.) they come together as “digital content”.

That is, it’s all digital, and it’s all delivered online, so there’s no reason why a product such as an album or collection of recorded works should stand alone without the added value of additional related content. Video, Ebooks and “info products”, Podcasts, Galleries, Ringtones, Software, widgets and 3^rd party apps.

But my whole point around the “content product” is not that because we can increase the value of a product through delivering convergent digital media it will kill the album.

Not at all.

It’s not that the value of digital copies of content is in general decline, and like the “information product” authors and content providers will have to look at ways to leverage this content for more connected and engaged fan interaction.

It’s all about traction for modern business models.

No one will ever tell you that you can’t sell your music. But guys like Radiohead and NIN are already making money in smarter and more engaging ways and it’s just going to get harder to create and convert engagement on your $10 selection of your latest half an hour of music when guys like radiohead are offering their music for next to nothing.

This is what I mean about propositions, branding and engagment. Radiohead’s proposition (pay what you like) is better than yours. Radiohead’s branding is better than yours (They’re the big band thats okay for clever liberals to like) and they’re engagement is better than yours (They’re making more money than ever).

Do you have a chance against Radiohead? Of course you do. With people who like your music more than Radiohead’s. That doesn’t mean they’ll pay for it if they’re not used to the idea.

So what will kill the album is the needs of artists to engage fans more meaningfully.

As I mentioned, this comes off the back of my recent online music promotion presentation, and when Dubber asked “Is the album dead?” that was a good point to move on from where my thinking had arrived at.

CD Baby and Tunecore still provide price breaks for albums. CD Baby is a flat fee whatever your release, while tunecore is 99c for songs per outlest and 9.99c for albums. So if your album has more than 10 songs on it, you’re getting a much better deal.

CD disc albums of course are still popular, and you’d be mad to turn your back on this revenue but kurb’s bi line is “preparing artists for the future.”

Not “preparing artists for the 90’s”.
The future of the music industry is not about selling bits of plastic or even selling copies of content. Although you should still be attempting to carry this off in the short to mid term, in the long term, it’s about providing valued experience for fans and users.

Fans and users are looking to become engaged and connected by valuable and authentic experience. So not only does that mean artists providing a deeper range of digital media content are able to engage more deeply, but those who are providing valuable interactions are creating more value as part of the attention economy that can be leveraged for revenue.

So again, no one is going to stop you releasing your one “album” per year, and for now, the album “bundling” phenomenon that has been part of the music industry for over 60 years since the LP vinyl was patented, is still a great way to add value by selling people extra songs they don’t know if they want.

In the same way an album allows you to sell people extra songs they dont know they want, the “content product” bundle is superior because now you’re also giving them video, text, images, software, and interactive content etc. that they didn’t know they wanted as well, but sure seems like a good deal.

But those artists who arrange their content and content products for engagement rather than mounting one major launch behind one flagship content product that is “the album” are likely to have more success to developing relationships and interactions with fans.

You maybe of the school of “love me, love my website, buy my album, thank you very much, see you next year!” when your next orchestrated deluge of hype decends, but believe me, it’s going to be the artists who have taken and run with the concept of the “content product” and constructed content products for maximum engegement.

Rather than one album per year, or 6 or 18 months, you’re committed to your fans and producing new content products every month. Or every 2 months or 2 weeks, whatever is suitable for the engegement you can realistically maintain.

Because everytime you create a new product, you’re engaging and developing relationships with fans – whether its a retail product or a free “attention economy” based product. You are creating engaging secondary marketing content and developing fresh propositions which draw in new audiences and engae new users and fans.

And whereas artists who can only deliver one highly developed content product or “album” on the back of one launch campaign will just not be able to maintain audience engagement and traction in the same way.

And in years to come, it will the artists that truly engage and build their brand that survive and those who relied on an increasingly irrelevant economic paradigm out of tradition who suffer wondering why it didn’t quite work out.

Dubber also alluded to the inevitable wave of C2C that will follow the consolidation of the digital revolution.

C2C refers to “consumer to consumer” business models.

That is as we move to the content product and deeper audience engagement, the next step is to give up control to your fans and to let them be the ones to deconstruct and reconstruct and mash up your content into any format or product they see fit for monetization, and then take a commission.

Are you ready? Kurb promotion is preparing artists for the future!!

Email me, Matt @ kurbpromo@gmail.com to talk about our online management and revenue development options.
Hey, did anyone notice how I was totally joining the conversation, bouncing off blogs and tweets and eveything?

Twitter is growing on me.

http://www.twitter.com/mattNZ

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Local considerations for music website hosting

by Matt @ Kurb on August 25, 2008

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Okay so there’s a little bit of a hosting issue.

Where is your website hosted? Google only introduced geo targeted search results in the last couple of years and it has until recently allowed me to dominate several niches within New Zealand given the site based on my old NZ server was 5 years old and with the work I’d done in SEO, that added up to a whole lot of geo targeted authority.

So my hosting jump and kicking off all these new sites on hostgator where I could basically do as I please and build websites willy nilly has put me on the dark side of google for the time being, which I was prepared to deal with but . . .

It was only tonight I realised with horror that the Kurb New Zealand Site is now hosted with Hostgator in the US and my geo targeting in google is all to hell!!!

There’s only so much the keywords “New Zealand” and “Auckland” can do if my server isn’t actually based in New Zealand!

This is quite a serious issue given one of my most successful strategies has been jeopardised and I can’t recall having ever found any discussion of this on any music promotion blog, let alone having to search for info on this on Google.

And why would that be? Maybe it’s something to do with y’know – if it doesn’t matter to americans than it doesn’t quite matter as much as it does otherwise?

Anyway. Kind of underlines for you and your management to have distinct awareness of online systems. There’s the design and presentation, there’s the technical functioning and then there’s the marketing and promotion. It’s not a walk in the park!

So what does this mean, big picture? It means if you really are going to own more of the web then you’ve got to be serious about geo targeting and having multiple sites on multiple servers based in different regions!

I’m completely serious! You need a website internationally targeted – most likely based in the US – But you will also need a site – and non duplicate one at that - on another server, on other servers based in important markets.

If your a New Zealand artist, you need a New Zealand based site with NZ features, but to be honest with you, you probably need another website based on a US server for the US market! Yup, and, I’m afraid to say it, if you’re serious about earnings . . . an australian site, a european site, an asian site, good god, a canadian site,

This is very similar to other detailed and data intensive elements of online promtion thats beig discussed in internet marketing. Let me not go into details but it has been illustrated that you are going to have more success in online advertising with heavier targeting, which means building seperate campaigns for locations, genders and age groups!

Lots of work to be done for artists here @ Kurb!

Sussing out NZ hosting will be the first one as as much as we like to think of ourselves as a digitally literate nation, the ocean is still full of digital oppressors ripping off little guys who don’t know any better.

Half these kiwi operators are probably selling US hosting and half the country is none the wiser that they’re getting dicked on Google.

Don’t get me wrong, my business model is based on digital ignorance also! But my clients can’t afford to pay more than $10 a week for hosting on top of a hundred other little costs, and my clients are in the music business and they’re struggling.

They need results. They need income coming in from local sources and from international sources. They need to build their network and own more of the web, and they need multiple hosting solutions.

In conclusion:

If you are not in America and america is not your main market than you should be finding out where your hosting is based and how much it is going to cost to at least bring that hosting to with a couple of thousand km’s from where you actually are.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Kurb Online Promotion Management Packages - New Music Marketing Artist Community - Music Marketing Management Blog - Youtube Video Promotion

Doing the Circuit: Touring with Kurb Digital Promotions

by Matt @ Kurb on August 25, 2008

So as you know I’m off on tour, so I thought I better do some kind of post on it – because experience always translates into valuable content for your blog!

But this is more of wisdom type post than a knowledge one, kind of like when I posted about the most important thing in the music industry is being nice.

My area of expertise is in online and budget promotion, but my personal experience is that making enemies in the music scene is death to your career.

And similarly, I’m not some expert on touring. In fact that is why I don’t manage bands, simply because I found well . . . event promotion and management is what I consider pretty stressful. So with touring, I tend to forge connections with those who have the skills to deal with promoters, venue owners and managers.

Collaborating and networking is a fundamental part of building your career as discussed recently by Justin Boland at Audible Hype. amongst his prime selection from “diy hip hop biz masterclass”.

So although I have toured the country on about 7 multi date tours I couldn’t call myself a professional in any measure because I have yet to make money from it. I do it purely for pleasure in the hope we will cover our expenses and I have a free holiday and enjoy the perks of being a musician.

But where I started with this was how I’d been focusing on preparing my own music content rather than blogging and doing secondary kurb stuff because when you’re touring like this and doing 3-4 gigs a week, my main aim long term is to create as many connections as possible, because as you learn more and make more connections, it gets easier, and you can start pushing it further. So I can’t go down there and play all the same songs I did last year.

But think about it long term, you gotta do this in music. You have one big song and you can tour off it for 20 years. You know every summer you’ll do the summer spots. You know every winter you’ll do the winter spots. You know when school is in you can play to the campus crowd, and you know when exams finish they want to party. This is what building a career is about.

I do not have a big song. But I’m a DJ afterall and me my equipment take up relatively little room. If you;re a singer/songwriter you’re probably the same. And like me you probably have a large and varied repertoire and can hold the stage on your own for long periods.

But from day one there’s always going to be that guy. That guy who still needs to charge his phone, to check his emails, who doesn’t get paid until thursday, who has no cigarettes, who gets too drunk at the gigs, who forgot to shower before a 3 hour van drive. You don’t want to be that guy on the tour.

I’m the guy who fits, so despite the fact I don’t have a large following per se, I’m economical, so I get to tour.

If I was 4 or 5 guys with a whole bunch of gear I would be thinking seriously about what kind of out of town gigs were really worth it. Again, being connected with people on the local scene can save you taking a heavy fall.

Having toured a lot I can tell you one thing. If you get drunk and try and pick up birds you will put the tour in jeopardy. I’ve toured with so many people who seemed to think it was all going to be a rock star fantasy and then there’s tears before bedtime.

If you can get pissed as a newt, pack down the gear efficiently, collect any fee due, have a wild orgy without disrupting anybody else and then get up and out by check out on time the next day before driving to another town and playing a blinder, then you’ll hear no complaint from me.

Planning and communication is obviously essential. No one wants to play tour manager put if someone doesn’t know whats going on you’re headed for disaster.

So often it’s all about the right venue on the right day. You need to understand the machinations of the local environment to know when to strike. Only by learning and making connections can you gain some control over this, and build on your experience and contacts.

Here’s one example, I was playing with a band that jumped on straight after the first support and had a tizzy 3 songs in and stopped playing when everyone had left because they didn’t realise cigarette breaks between bands were absolutely mandatory in this town.

This is where digital networks come in because if you’ve been fostering interactions with similar acts in neighbouring vicinities through myspace, mentioning and linking to them on your blog, etc., you can call on them to help you get established playing in their town and agree to do the same – ye olde swap gig. The important thing is to approach just like internet dating. If you don’t expect too much you might be pleasantly surprised.

As I’ve said, when you play to less than 100 people, you manage your fans with your cell phone. Similarly, acts you connect with will probably do the same. All the friends of the bands, All their brothers and sisters and girlfriends and boyfriends, and like all the weirdo’s who just generally hang around.

Christchurch is the biggest city outside of my hometown Auckland we’ll be playing and we made a decision to break with tradition and make the christchurch gig our priority because when you play in Queenstown, it’s really just a party and who you are doesn’t really matter. But Queenstown is a tourist ski resort and Christchurch is a city, that’s where you’re looking to establish a following that will develop after 2 or 3 gigs into a demand that actually exists for you to play there.

In a town or tourist spot, if you get on with the bar owner or manager you can play there when you like. But in a city, people have choices and if they haven’t heard of you then you’re right back at square one and nobody is coming to your gig, they’re going to the gig with the music they already know they like.

So not only have we reached out to our established contacts to let them own the gig a bit more, we’ve branded it a bit more heavily for the city so rather than a showcase of artists, there’s a theme running over the night that hits a certain niche.

we’ve taken the step of spending money on radio. What that does is give everyone involved with the gig an idea that we are committed to this being a decent gig, but it’s not likely that door takings will cover our expenses once you include travel and accommodation. It’s more about a long term commitment to establishing connections that you can then leverage in future.

So in conclusion . . .

People talk about touring and gigging as the solution to artists money woes. The problem is that once again, we’re talking about established artists here. We’re talking about artists who have already built content, built fanbases, have spent and invested time and money into developing their brand.

For unestablished artists, it’s a whole other game. If you need to raise funds then you’re looking at the wrong strategy. Touring for an unestablished act is a strategy to build your initial fanbase and contacts and it’s likely to cost you money.

Also, what you’re doing of course IS “paying your dues”, is “getting your chops”, I can’t deny that playing all those gigs – though not all of them thoroughly enjoyable – really built my skills as a performer and I always come back from tour with more of a natural flow that comes from performing a lot. And of course you’re just learning so much and picking up so much feedback about what you’re doing.

The drawback of course is that it can take weeks to recover emotionally and financially. Your tour may only be two or three weeks but can you afford to commit 6 weeks of preparation and recovery into this tour when you may not be ready?

So I can see we’re going to have to talk more about touring. Specifically WHEN it’s a good time to tour, what you can look to get out of it and obviously, digital and online promotions in touring.

Part 2 coming soon.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info
http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

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Online music promotion: Putting the “Fun” in funnel

by Matt @ Kurb on August 14, 2008

So yeah I was like, totally offline!

I was back in the dark ages where I couldn’t just scroll my reader and check email every 5 minutes when I got distracted.

Just like you! I’m sitting there like . . . man.

I’ve GOT to get that new content ready.

My videos. My ebook.

But of course, I’m a marketing guy. I sell stuff. What’s the point of making a new album when you aren’t ready to sell it?

You could give it away free but like if you want to sell it . . . you kinda should know how to like. Sell Stuff!

So I really got stuck into developing my content platform and kinda working on sculpting my funnel. Yes I kow I’m talking about Kurb again, but when I do this it all applies to artists. I look at a lot of my clients and they’ve got good music but they’re NOT bringing that together with rock solid internet marketing principals. Oh yeah that’s right, that’s what they pay me for.

I put the fun in funnel.

A funnel. What’s a funnel? It’s the motion of sucking those fans into your twisted web of musical genius! Muahaha!

No seriously. There’s a series of stages that your potential fans are going through to turn them into “true” fans. I’m quite reductive and I often reduce it to the importance of securing email adresses and managing them on an email list, but there’s a series of stages that fans/buyers are going through before they sign up and I’ve been talking a lot about it: Engagement. Connection.

Fans seeing videos, hearing music, and reading blogs that contain ideas that they connect with and say yeah - I Identify with this. there’s something here about me, or what I aspire to be, or values I share.

Then there’s another series of stages - and this is generally after you get them to give you their email address - where you get the money.

People are going to find me and you on Myspace, Youtube, facebook, they’re all doing google serches and obscure terms you’ve used and tags you’ve used repeatedly are going to jumping up and the people are going to be interested and they’re going to be watching the videos, and hearing the podcasts and in your case obviously - the music! - And reading the blogs. And they’re digging it.

That’s the concept i broke in my presentation. That content IS promotion. Own more of the net. Be a larger chunk of it. Create more.

But you’ve got to remember if you don’t have a label, you don’t have a sales and marketing dept.! (But you can probably pick me up for a song right now, the NZ dollar is on a slide thats expected to last 12 months.)

Then we’re developing what I’ve talked about before: the proposition.

You see the problem can be reduced to the fact that web design is not web marketing. Web designers make your website look pretty, they probably don’t know anything more than you do about what makes someone decide that they need to buy. And buy now.

In fact it quite plainly shocks me how little web designers know about basic marketing and even basic internet marketing. You know - the part where you get the money. I guess that’s why they’re web designers. It’s like band photography. When you’re a success story you can pay for all the band photography and web design and street posters and publicity you like but right now we’re mainly worried about the part where you actually make some money, and for that to happen you want to give the money you do have to me so we can build something that makes money, not just looks pretty.

Check out what I’ve been working on here at http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info.

No, it’s not pretty.

This is called a “landing” page. The point of a landing page is to increase the chance of a desired outcome, a “conversion” - that usually means when someone buys something, or conducts the behaviour that is the desired outcome of the landing pages relentlessly persuasive sales copy.

It follows a lot of basic marketing principles, the main one being, it’s not confusing. The overall effect being that the visitor is being persuaded toward ONE DIRECTIVE:

Email me, Matt Turner - kurbpromo@gmail.com

. . . so - I get their email address - and we can talk about them paying me money to do their music promotion online. The result of that, somewhat unsuprisingly, is that a lot of the people who email me have already decided they want to give me money. I just have to explain how it works.

Another basic marketing principal is at work. The longer I hold the readers attention, the more persuasive the proposition becomes. That’s why there’s so much there and I have been unconventional in providing links (diverting attention) to my blog etc. - because if people are wanting to make a purchase because they are continuing to award you their attention, then there’s got to be as much content ready for the user/fan/client to absorb as they need to to be ready to buy into the proposition.

One thing I’ve also done now is removed advertising from pages like this where serious business is taking place. On my blog and various random pages on my site it’s fine, but when it comes down to the serious business of having a potential fan or client commit to the proposition you don’t want any distractions. I mean seriously. Do you want to sell music products and services and grow your network of fans/customers or do you want to sell clicks for .50c?

Now we’ve got to step back. Because the proposition you’re most likely to be using for a landing page is the email sign up. From an artist management point of view - in my job I find it crazy enough dealing with a dozen guys who give me money regularly for stuff. How are you going to deal with it when you’ve got 500 people all over you that you’ve got to maintain and manage some kind of relationship with because they buy everything they ask you them to? Because they all pay $1 per week so you don’t have to gig constantly?

You see because I’m only dealing with a dozen or so guys that I promote and put food on my table, it’s manageable that I rely on a bare minimum of digital tools to maintain those relationships, it’s why I don’t rely on a mailing list solution You need at least 100 people on that list before you should even think about developing revenue.

You want to release a cd but you dont have a mailing list? who’s going to buy it? How are they going to know it’s out? Your 6 figure TV ad campaign?

Hopefully you can see why I talk about online “management” and fan management, managing interactions and managing relationships as being so important now. Of course it’s not important at the beginning when you’ve only got your mates behind you and you can “manage fan interactions” with your phone, but as I say how good you do this is basically a measure of how long you’ll wait to go full time. Because you can’t be a full time pro muso without a fanbase - not one that you can’t manage.

You can’t manage a relationship with more than 200 people without software, online platforms and digital solutions. That’s kinda what I meant when I’ve been talking about preparing artists for the future. Because the future as it looks right now is managing your fan database, distributing content to those who have asked for it, and then developing the propositions that will engage them into purchasing or attention based actions from which you profit at quite a high margin, which of course is constantly accumulating as your content spreads - both by your hand, and as you grow, your marketing guy, your marketing team . . . and word of mouth by your fans.

So in the same way I’m putting up my landing page and pointing people to it with the sole, focused intention of “converting” them, that is, getting them to email or call me, you’re probably wanting to be really zeroing in on building your email list and using software systems to manage your relationships with those who sign up for it.

Why even try to sell them your album until you know they’re interested? We know that most people - and it’s a way of life on the internet - are just out for free stuff. So you pull them in with stuff that’s free and good, free content that is worthwhile and builds your brand, and as I mentioned, the more of their attention you get the more persuasive and influential the connection will become as you start to develop your propositions.

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Music Marketing: Time for a little talk.

by Matt @ Kurb on August 13, 2008

Web 2.0 is a busy place. And I’m a busy guy!

You gotta do your ground work, you gotta pay your dues. You gotta have the talent, and you gotta have the charisma. But I deal in big solutions. Big solutions that will break an act online, because it’s about applying methods that leverage your groundwork, the paying of your dues, your talent, your charisma, the brand and the contacts you’ve built from the 100’s of fans you’ve built to turn that in time into thousands.

And to manage those relationships for maximum value.

When I say value I mean “Something you can charge for”.

So we found out on myspace that acts could conduct online promotion and manage relationships to generate exposure. But they weren’t able to make money because it was all on myspace’s terms. But the light of myspace grows dim and those going to facebook are finding a whole different game.

Because facebook is a place for people who already know one another to connect, not for rising internet celebrities.

Artists and those bringing content online to create attention are moving closer to the source, to the heat, to the action, to the big solution.

Google is the almighty at the top of the food chain, artist are sowing the seeds to bathe in it’s light! Myspace and facebook and last.fm and whatever is on the cards are merely doorways to where artists are controlling the content. controlling the interaction and controlling the monetization on their own sites and blogs.

Their creating connection through branding, fostering communication with digital management, and creating propositions that engage fans.

They’re going to the source. Leveraging content and community with strong propositions to create fans. But where are the fans?

A digital management solution for 30 kids who come to all your shows is called a mobile phone with an sms txting function.

Most artists have barely emerged into constructing their proposition so they’re not ready to engage fans!

I don’t want to buy your music! I don’t!

You’ve got to do better than that. You’ve got to get me into it!!!!

So now that the effectiveness of hyper targeted advertising online is becoming apparent, artists just need to develop engaging propositions

like i’m talking

you can download half the album for free (the good half)

but if you want the rest we need your email.

ALL ABOUT EMAIL LIST BUILDING HERE AT KURB

It’s how you make money, basically.

Email. Digital management and targeted advertising. Big solutions.

The kicker about ads obviously is that they cost money.

But the final word is that thes ads are pumping my promotions and taking up the slack from the fall off on Myspace.

But here’s the thing. Google ads are one thing. Then we got Facebook ads.

So at least $50 from our FREE $250 facebook target ad campaign has expired.

I’ve just got into using my own personal $250 and I think it’s brilliant because it gives artists who dont have a spare $250 a taste of what they would be doing if they DID have a spare $250!!!

I’m going to have a detailed report on Facebook ads coming in the artist community that is up now at

http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Basically you got another month by the looks to get this and seeing I’ve got the 3 months for $400 cheapy deal on for kiwi acts, there’s no excuse.

For $400 you get the free ad campaign, you get a blog or basic site if you need it, you get full acces to the artist community which is stacking up with tasty tasty promo resources and I’m going to be around for 3 months making sure you’re doing everything right, and we’ll do a little myspace and youtube magic for you too.

So web 2.0 marches on!

My new blog is now at http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com

there’s gonna be exclusive articles going up there that wont be going out anywhere else (myspace, wordpress, etc.)

And of course - sign up for the artist community while it is still free!!!

http://www.newmusicmarketing.com

Strictly 100 members is the upper limit to this exclusive artist resource.
Also - I’m on tour in september, look for when I’ll be around and we can have a quick catch up if you’re considering digital promo.

Oct 29 Palmy
Oct 30 Wanganui
Sept 6 CHCH
Sept 10 Wanaka
Sept 11 Queenstown
Sept 12 Dunedin
Sept 13 Timaru
I would seriously take the $400 deal if you’re in NZ. The kiwi dollar dropping like this means unfortunately it’s likely that I won’t be doing one-on-one with too many local acts in the future.

But then hey - wouldn’t you rather be making money in american dollars online just like your uncle Matt?

Go global. Get in touch.

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.cd-dvd-duplication.co.nz
http://www.aucklandposters.info
http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info

Teh Interwebz: I ownz mor ov it - Online Music Promotion Diary August 08

by Matt @ Kurb on August 8, 2008

The story so far:

So I did my first presentation on online music promotion and I was stoked because I was ready to start doing more video presentations and secretly working on my new ebook that will be a free gift when you sign up to our new artist community at http://newmusicmarketing.com

But then there was a massive storm and like not only my internet went down, and all my clients posters got washed down the street, but I decided to switch over to vodafone while I could and I was damn near offline for like 5 frickin days!!! I almost died.

So had lots of internet and postering to catch up on!

On top of that I’m doing my yearly tour of New Zealand so I’ll be on that for 3 weeks, plus when I drop back to Auckland I’m supporting an international DJ so blog is likely to stay pretty quiet over the next month or so.

In regards to touring, I might use this opportunity to post on touring but you really cant go past Justin at Audible Hype’s series check it out here:

http://www.audiblehype.com/diy/entry/part_one_is_touring_really_necessary_in_2008/

http://www.audiblehype.com/diy/entry/part_two_is_touring_really_necessary_in_2008

http://www.audiblehype.com/diy/entry/part_three_yes_touring_is_really_necessary_in_2008/

For me, I have a demanding job promoting other people’s music, so I don’t really have time with my work to develop my own music to the point where I can make money touring. I can not lose money, though, so really for me it’s a free holiday where I get to be a DJ again just like when I was on the dole.

But I also finally bought a computer thats dedicated to offline tasks IE music and video, and my soundcard seems to be happy so pretty keen to get into remixing more clients and developing content in that way. I urge you all to be prolific!

So!

Managing relationships and managing content online! That’s what it’s all about here at kurb promotions!

So much so that I had to cut this bit out and make it it’s own separate post. You see I was offline and I was trying to develop content like any normal person would, and although marketing starts with product development, whats the point of developing a product that you don’t know how to market?

A product like say . . . A cd of original recordings?

It’s kinda like having a shop with no salespeople in it. A lot of people would feel strange and leave. Some might look around, but only the people who didn’t want to pay for anything would actually get your music.

And it’s a funny metaphor because that’s what’s probably happening if you’re not playing salesman on your site!

That post coming up is all about how to really ramp up your marketing platform. We’re back again talking about the iportance of engagement, connections, branding, identity and building your email list and optimising fan interactions for profitable outcomes.

I’m also talking about my new cheesy landing page at http://kurbartistmanagement.info.

I know. It’s ugly. It’s cheesy. It’s not there to make me look cool. It’s called marketing and it means I get paid.

Which brought us back to the new projects i’ve been working on such as http://newmusicmarketing.com!

Because the whole idea of that site was about managing my relationships with my customers through a community. Right now it’s still free to access the whole site while the core content is going up.

But there’s not just that - there’s lots of the different stuff I’ve been developing online. So given that this IS an update I’ll talk more about what I’ve been up to first.

It comes back to what I was saying before about owning more of the net. Building broader platforms online.

That doesn’t mean joining every social network or social music service!!!! Remember what we said? Do you want to share your money with these social media venture capitalist entrepreneur guys in San Jose or do you just want to use (use being the right word) a handful of the sites that are the biggest and best for your audience and leech their traffic back to your site so you can keep all the money yourself?

Good. When you’re using the machine, make sure you use a good one.

Building a broader platform means building more niche awareness! A large amount of my leads for online promo are not musicians at all, they just want their videos promoted on Youtube. So seizing on that niche, I’m developing a site and related blogs just for youtube now, just for that active niche.

Let’s have an example. You’re in an emo band, so you probably launched your clothing label before you even had your first gig. Are you developing a website or niche online space for people who are basically more interested in the clothes than the music? Is that part of your niche that you’re embracing, or turning away from your main site?

Maybe personally you’re actively interested in . . . dogs, or cats, or axolotyls. In your website you have a place where people who like your music can connect with you about your pets, but have you thought about expanding a niche where people who are more interested in the pets can connect with your music?

Derek Sivers from CD baby - or should I say formerly of! - always talks about the woman with the CD of sailing songs that is a top seller. Now it’s a classic example of niche products taking off when they find their market, but I would also say that not only is there the opportunity for that musician to sell niche sailing products, but to also develop a website that is more focused on creating interaction with people interested in sailing and engaging initially through sailing content before connecting with relevant entertainment content.

I’ve just started working with more kids entertainers also, because the way they are able to monetize niche products is insane. I mean sure, I get paid pretty darn well for playing pirates at little kids birthdays but when my website is packin a full host of pirate related products that are simply purchased through my site and the delivered by a third party, thats when we really start talking. Passive secondary income, baby.

We’re still selling ads, we’re still collecting emails, we’re still promoting primary content for sale as well as niche products - it’s just the context is slightly more weighted.

But at the same time, we’re “owning more of the web”.

Teh Interwebz: I iz mor ov it

So let me survey my new operations for you.

Of course there’s my main website http://www.kurb.co.nz which is my NZ based HQ where my CD and DVD production and posters are pushed because thats my main earner within NZ.

But I also have another site at http://www.kurbpromotions.com which is a one page index of my services from a more international perspective, because I don’t need any more requests for CD/DVD production from Sweden.

Then you’ve got my new blog which is settling in at http://www.musicmarketingmanagement.com which is my main blog now where I discuss a lot of theory and some practical stuff on digital music promotion.

If you want to check it out you can see i’ve been learning quite a few web development tricks and I’ve picked up a few cool new toys as well. I guess it’s a journey to bring together the multimeida content experience and functionality of a typical website together with the powerfully functioning features of a blog.

But then of course on top of that I’ve got http://newmusicmarketing.com which is basically a community for artists who are either working with me or actively interested in developing online promotion where I can discuss more practical execution and also make available the kind of sensitive and powerful information I only want to impart to those who are or have or will actually pay me, and I’m in an environment where I control that information and I am collecting email addresses of those who sign up as well so I have the opion of launching na email list.

Then you’ve got http://www.kurbartistmanagement.info which as I said is my cheesy hard sell page. That’s where the big marketing persuaders come in. As I said, your social media profiles, your blogs, they are there to create the platform for us to engage the fans and establish the relevant credibility and authority. You know - if your singer cant sing or my spelling was any worse it’s not likely we’ll get to that proposition point, but when we do . . . those persuaders are coming down on you like snow!

Then we’ve got my small business promotions blog at http://smallbusinesspromotions.info thats a small business journal where I kinda blog about my experiences in business. This simply comes down to more words. More content. Owning more of the internet.

But then I’ve got my new small business site I’m developing at http://www.digibiznz.com which is basically more about hard selling small new zealand businesses on my online marketing services.

Yes, just like kurb, there’s no difference whether i do internet promotion in NZ or overseas (except I can charge way more overseas because NZers are all broke) BUT my niche is NZ. I know when I’m connecting with prospects in NZ they are far more likely to want to do business with me because there’s a connection and some security in it being a transnational interaction. We can talk on the phone to discuss their business online marketing requirements, etc. bit of basic customer profiling.

But really those are just features, and similarly not everyone will care if you like gothy emo clothes, dogs, or sailing or want to buy plastic pirate swords. But this is what I mean by a broader platform that captures more fringe and niche potential for you to engage new audiences.

We just keep trucking on at kurb!

We got another detailed post on developing solid marketing and managing fan relationships coming right up!

Meanwhile I’m working on my ebook!!!! Basically it’ll just be painstakingly detailed amounts of information on conducting music promotions online except unlike my blog I’m going to edit out everything thats not important or doesn’t make sense so you’ll have a tight overview.

It was only from doing my presentation and talking way too long that I realise there is huge amounts of detailed info to getting it right.

I’m halfway through, and I’d say I’ll be launching in late september, what I will probably do is when the paid forum is introduced at $97 for 3 months membership, you can get my ebook free! But then I might sell it for $12.97 on the side if you’re like allergic to forums or something.

With the forum I’ll just be basically developing it into a kick arse resource and then applying more effort to make it more usable, so the options there could be that you join the forum and then you pay your kid sister to carry out some of the relentlessly boring tasks.

If you ever wanted to be a band manager, well I can help you with that. It probably wont be until next year that I will develop specific resources for band managers

The problem I envisioned though was that if http://newmusicmarketing.com was a success (in business terms “success” is regarded as anything that didn’t fail) that I would probably get more hare brained schemes.

So I might try and see if I can get my music site off the ground before the end of the year. The kurb music site will basically be a site dedicated to fan experience and monetizing a community based on content provided by artists working with Kurb.

What’s the idea? Well basically while creating a platform where I can actually help artists to enter directly into earning from day 1 at kurb - it’s all controlled under my brand property.

They ain’t coming to download music from your band. They’re coming because I’m a kick arse web developer and I’m a kick arse internet marketer!