Music Business and Trend-Mongering

You are probably already aware of this already, but if not, you might be interested in checking out the activities surrounding this Saturday’s Record Store Day. Details are here.

Some cool events happening nationally, including Bjork’s screening of her new 3-D video “Wanderlust” (complete with 3-D glasses!) at a number of indie stores:

I go in depth into brick and mortal retail in lesson 4 of my Music Marketing 201 course. I’m all about the Future of Music, and I know it might seem counter intuitive to discuss a marketing segment that is clearly struggling on whole, but I think to discount physical independent retail (I’m not talking about the big box retailers here), even if it is not necessarily a growth segment of the industry, is a mistake. There are some amazing independent retailers that can be tremendous partners for developing artists. Josh Madell at Other Music in NYC, Eric Levin at Criminal Records in Atlanta, Mike Dreese at Newbury Comics in Boston, John Kunz at Waterloo in Austin and many other forward-thinking music retail owners still play a big part in “breaking” artists. They are community focused, Internet savvy, and have an infrastructure in place to promote new music. A successful musician needs to have their marketing campaign firing on all cylinders. I still believe that a physical retail campaign, even if it is accomplished through consignment, should certainly be considered as part of the big picture for touring artists that can draw outside of their hometown.