Music Business and Trend Mongering

Stefan Lessard is the bass player and a founding member of the Dave Matthews Band. He’s also taking courses at Berkleemusic.com. I caught up with Stefan when DMB played at the Comcast Center outside of Boston. The interview below is part of a larger piece, which we’ll be putting out soon.

Mike King: You’ve been playing with the Dave Matthews Band for 20 years. How did you go from playing small clubs in Virginia to this?

Stefan Lessard: This band, for a while, took every single gig that we were offered. We played every party, every rooftop party, every fraternity; we never said no, we just played everything. I think the most that we played was three gigs in one day and each one of those where about two and a half hours long. So we just worked ourselves silly for four years and when things started growing, we got on the Horde tour. And back when we started, taping was huge. We let people tape our shows and those tapes started getting everywhere and after a few years, we thought, “well, we should probably release a professional sounding live album for our first record.” So we did and we threw a few studio numbers on there but it was mostly just a live show and people loved it because all they had of us was these crappy sounding mix tapes. So finally there was this quality representation of who we were and what we did. It just really grew from there and it was a steady increase. After our first studio record, it really shot up to some sort of success.

Our business model was a lot different back then from most bands at that time, too. For a lot of bands, who are just struggling to play and keep afloat, a record company comes to them and says “We like you guys. We think we can make something out of you. Here’s X amount of dollars upfront and when you are done, we’ll give you X amount more and we’ll give you this amount for tour and give you this percent of merchandise.” What the bands didn’t realize is that the record company was pretty much taking control of the full aspect of things, like the merchandise and the booking and the touring and everything. Once you are theirs, everything went through record companies.

We had such a machine already happening by the time the record companies all got hip to who we were, that they were like, “Well, what do we do with this band? They’re already kind of doing it.” RCA was the first company that came out and saw what we did and said, “This is great! They have their touring and merch down, all we have to do is help them make a great studio record.” They signed us with that sort of freedom and we’ve had a lot of freedom from the start and only have been given more freedom throughout the years. It’s helped us not have to repay so much. It’s really helped us look at the future and move forward.

MK: Was Coran [Coran Capshaw, DMB Manager; founder of Red Light Management; co-founder of ATO Records] helping you set up your infrastructure at the beginning stage?

SL: Well, we were incorporated as a band, which was another thing that a lot of bands did not do, where the lead singer kind of owned the whole thing or the guitar player or whatever, but we came together, and incorporated. The merchandise thing…we just made t-shirts one day and just started selling the t-shirts and people loved them so we just kept doing that. Coran came around because he ran a club that we played at, and we started playing there every Tuesday and he became pretty interested in what we were doing because he saw that there was a lot of momentum. So when he came into it, there was already a lot of momentum, but he definitely helped sculpt the business model that we have used throughout our career. He’s a pretty powerful force when it comes to the business side of the music.

MK: I know you are active on Twitter and Facebook. Can you talk about how you are engaging your fans online?

SL: Our band has always tried to be at the forefront of cutting edge technology when it came to the fan site. When we first started, a fan site was more or less just a mailing list where you would sign a piece of paper and send it to a P.O. box and then maybe you got a t-shirt or a couple stickers or something. There wasn’t really too much incentive to be a fan member. So we created an online fan site and it just took off and that kind of became the model for every band after that.

I have started thinking about a solo record. It’s one of those things, in the history of music, most people that do that, their solo record isn’t something that carries because everyone sees it as project from the bass player for the Dave Matthews Band. So I decided that I would start a website – a platform that I could express myself, so people could see me outside of being the Dave Matthews Band bass player. So it worked and for a little while, people were signing up and talking and I would do little blogs on stuff. MySpace came up and it completely obliterated my whole concept because my concept was MySpace. All of the sudden, I signed up for an account to MySpace and I had 400 more people becoming my friends on Myspace than on my own site. I sort of left my site to the side and I went to MySpace and then from there, I went to Facebook and then from there, I went to Twitter. Next thing I know, I had a voice with the fans. Now it’s gotten to the point where I have to be really careful about what I say because people can take it one way or the other. Sometimes I like that because I don’t mind a little bit of controversy, other times, I want to go out there and squash the rumors. There are a lot of people pretending to be us online. If I find out I’ll go straight to the source, ask BT [Boyd Tinsley, violinist for DMB] if he had a Twitter account and he’d say, “what’s Twitter?” and I was like “Alright guys, FAKE! Don’t talk to him! He’s pretending to be BT”. I think I gained a sort of trust inside the community. Now its just fun and it’s a promotional thing for me. If something happens like the Grand Canyon Adventure [Stefan co-wrote the original music for Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk], I can just start talking about it. I’m taking courses at Berkleemusic, and fans love hearing about the homework I’m doing. I’ve been posting about homework and I think people are starting to think I’m crazy because it’s 4 in the morning and I’m like “still working!” and they’re like “When do you sleep?” It’s been a lot of fun for me and I think the fans enjoy it, so it is something that I’ll keep doing.

I was a huge fan of Kick back in the day, and seeing Berklee’s Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) cover “Need You Tonight” for Beck’s Record Club series makes me want to revisit the record.

Record Club: INXS “Need You Tonight” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Also: is it just me or is this bass line borrowing from Sly Stone’s “Thank You For Talkin’ to Me Africa?”

More from Beck’s Record Club (including the Velvet Underground!) here.

Even with all the buzz around online Direct To Fan marketing tools and techniques, I still firmly believe that live events are one of the best ways to connect directly with fans in a meaningful way. Similar to how DTF initiatives have expanded the relationship between artist and fan as it pertains to retail, it’s encouraging to see artists expanding the boundaries of what constitutes a “tour” (such as David Bazan’s “living room” show series) as well.

Artists are becoming more adept at using technological tools and third party partners to bring the spirit and energy of a live event to folks that are unable to attend in person. Sheila Hash, a former Online Music Marketing with Topspin student, is engaging in a wonderful “take-away show” initiative with her band Crush Luther, which provides their hard core fans with an opportunity to check out a unique and personal acoustic performance, and perhaps more importantly, also works as a compelling introduction for casual and potential fans. Take a look at an example, here:

no plan 8 #132. “slowdance anywhere i go” from Justin Borja on Vimeo.

In terms of music marketing, videos events like this can also help to extend the life cycle of a band’s release by providing serialized content well past release date, which is crucial in keeping fans engaged with your band.

Of course traditional live club events still provide an opportunity for artists to establish long-term fan relationships, and Christopher Grant Ward from The Elk (another former student in my Online Music Marketing with Topspin course) has created a wonderful data-driven analysis on the techniques he used to promote his show, with a focus on increasing his number of fans (in this case, defined as permission-based email contacts) and maximizing traffic at the event. While data analysis is key to guiding a successful online music marketing campaign, it’s rare to see an artist go into such detail around a live event. I think what Christopher created is a valuable case study, and I’m psyched to be able to present the details:

Overview:

* Campaign duration: 40 days (02/10 – 03/31)
* Goals:
1) Maximize audience turn-out for the “Rock The Pink Slip” concert
2) Grow the band’s permission-based email list.

Data Analysis of Campaign

(click to enlarge)

Campaign Details

Site Visibility, Pricing, and Acquisition Techniques

A month out from the event, Christopher implemented a tiered approach to selling tickets to the show on his own Website. As mentioned above, the goal of this campaign was focused on increasing the draw to the show and acquiring new fans (as opposed to focusing strictly on monetization), and as such Christopher offered the tickets at extremely reasonable prices: 1 ticket cost $4.00, 2 tickets cost $7, and 4 cost for $10. Because Christopher was using Topspin to facilitate the ticket sales, he was able to collect the email addresses of everyone that purchased from him (thus capturing the fan relationship). PDFs of the tickets were created, and all purchasers were put on a list that the bouncer checked at the door.

Advertising

14 days prior to the event, a small online ad campaign was initiated on Facebook and Google AdWords. Christopher experimented with several sets of ads over the course of the campaign, which correlated to two periods of high click rates (see graph above). The 1st of these high periods targeted a larger, more broad audience and directly promoted the show. This ad yielded the highest click rates but had no conversions.

The 2nd of these periods targeted smaller audiences and promoted the band’s music. These ads yielded somewhat fewer clicks but a significantly higher lift in plays (via a Topspin widget) and emails collected. Messages that directly promoted the show yielded significantly fewer visits, plays and emails collected.

Facebook Video Share Initiative

One month out from the event, Christopher released a video on Facebook, with prominent calls to action and direct links to the ticket offer information on his site. While the video was responsible for the largest spike in plays (Christopher was also using Topspin’s Email for Media and streaming player widgets) during the live event campaign, the video was ineffective at driving traffic or ticket sales.

Campaign Results

Again, as this campaign was focused on growing the band’s permission-based email list, the fan relationship statistics were the main gauge of success.

* Concert Attendees: 211
* # of New Email Addresses: 83. This translated into a 94% increase in the band’s email list.
* Unique Visits to band site: 1384 (based on Google Analytics data from 02/10 – 03/31)
* Total Page Views: 2910 (based on Google Analytics data from 02/10 – 03/31)

While revenue was not the main focus of the campaign, the band didn’t want to lose money, either. Details on expenses and sales for the event:

Ticket Breakdown:

Average ticket price: $5.46
# of $8 (door) tickets sold: 98 ($784)
# of $4 tickets sold: 46 ($184)
# of $3.50 tickets sold: 18 ($66)
# of $2.50 tickets sold: 48 ($120)

Gross Earnings: $1154
less advertising expenses: $325
less club take: $235
================
Net Earnings: $594

Cost Analysis of Emails Collected

It’s difficult to estimate the lifetime value of an email address. Christopher took a stab at estimating the cost of acquiring the 83 emails by dividing the money left on the table if the band did not discount the tickets by the amount of emails collected to come up with a cost of $3.54 per email. The math looks like this:

The band made $370 on tickets sold through direct sales on the site.
If those tickets were sold at full cost (assuming they got the
same number of concertgoers) they would have earned $664 on that same
segment. The money left on the table was $294. Divided by 83 emails, the cost
of each email collected could be calculated as $3.54.

This number was valuable to the band in estimating how they should price their
products and to help them gauge what expenses are cost-effective to building their
Network.

Post-Show Campaign and Analysis

About 30% of total visits to the site and 10% of emails collected occurred *after* the show. The band prepped an HTML page and Topspin widget before the concert. At the show, they used a photographer, videographer and audio engineer to capture live content from the show, and by the time the fans got up the next morning after the show, they had live audio and photos from the show in their inbox. The following weekend, the band released live video of the concert as well, paired with an album purchase offer. Following up with fans after gigs was a great way to continue driving traffic and getting new play and email conversions.

Here’s the video that was sent out post-show:

Further Analysis and Findings

1. Club ticket sales are time sensitive. Sales of concert tickets on the site were quite low until right before the show. In fact, 95% of ticket sales occurred less than 48 hours before show time (a spike in emails collected on show night can be attributed to these sales.) Even during the band’s largest spike in visits (200+) on March 17th, the band yielded fewer than $10 in sales. Overall, it is impossible to tell how many of these prior visitors may have returned to purchase tickets. Most people probably decide to see a club show within three days of gig night, especially when there is no stated limit on ticket sales.

2. Advertising data showed a lift in the number of visits to the band’s site, but few conversions. The good news is that targeted ads drove traffic, even for an unknown band and small club events. The bad news is that it was impossible to correlate ad clicks to returning visitors who purchased tickets.

3. Christopher’s targeted campaign more than doubled his permission based email list, and created dozens of new fan connections which he can use for re-marketing down the line, for free (as opposed to starting over with his next marketing campaign).

I’d like to thank Christopher for sharing this fantastic data. Follow up with him and The Elk, here.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Hypebot’s Kyle Bylin (@kbylin) about online music marketing and my Berkleemusic Topspin online course. The interview originally ran on Hypebot in two parts, both of which are below.

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Kyle Bylin: Over the course of the last ten weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of taking Online Music Marketing with Topspin through Berkleemusic with Mike King (@atomzooey) as my instructor. Though, to be sure, I’m likely to a biased opinion of the course — for some reasons I can account for and others that I’m not as obvious to – I have to honestly say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the class and have thus far gained deeper understanding of online music marketing. Being that much of my work consists of exploring the more ‘theoretical constructs’ of the music industries, it has been great to gain actionable insights into the landscape before us.

I have had nothing but a positive experience with the online course, and although I do encourage you to take my perspective with as many grains of salt as you’d like, in my humble opinion Berkleemusic and Topspin have come together, synthesized a wealth of information, and made it accessible to people across various backgrounds, goals, and experience, which is no easy task. That said I do believe that the course achieves this very difficult task of both communicating this knowledge and making it so that it’s relevant and actionable to musicians, business people, and even minor media theorists like myself.

Since the semester is winding down and starting up again on April 5, and no doubt many you probably have questions regarding the course and about Topspin in general, it felt appropriate to speak with Mike King and open up the dialog on this subject. If anyone has more specific questions about the course for Mike or myself, please post them in the comments, and we’ll both do our best to respond. In the meantime though, do enjoy this interview with Mike (after the jump), and I hope, like I anticipate — that it’s of great interest to you.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Mike (@atomzooey) is Associate Director of Marketing at Berkleemusic, Berklee College of Music’s online school and author of Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail, which you can get a free chapter of here.

Mike, one of the things we talked quite a bit about is ‘the curse of knowledge,’ which is, as brothers Chip and Dan Heath of Made to Stick have explained it, what happens when we know something, and it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. In co-authoring a course like this one, how does ‘the curse of knowledge’ come into play, why is it so easy to take for granted what we know, and how did you overcome it, without oversimplifying the course material?

Mike King: That’s a good question. I’ve been working at Berkleemusic for seven years and teaching here for the past three, and it’s been really interesting to see the change in perspective from students. Early on, I’d see a certain percentage of students that were more focused on the old business model, like how to get on commercial radio, what do they have to do to get a record deal, how do they get coverage in Rolling Stone, and so on. I do think it’s based on what folks have grown up with and what they know. Back in the day, there were limited options for visibility; it was primarily TV or radio, and the record label was the necessary vehicle for getting this visibility. In a way, from an outside perspective, I can see that it is somewhat comforting to break up music marketing in these easy to understand segments, but the reality is that the options that worked for years—such as retail visibility via a co-op campaign, a national radio campaign, and print advertising—are not really viable options for most artists.

Over the past year or so, I have seen fewer and fewer students coming into the online classes focused on moving their career forward via those old school methods. There are folks out there— like Ian Rogers, Dave Allen, Jed Carlson, Mike Masnick, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Hugh McLeod, Dave Kusek, Patrick Faucher, Bruce Houghton, and yourself—driving home the fact that there are new and alternative ways to advance your career, which has really helped to enlighten a large subset of artists.

In terms of the Topspin course, I start off by presenting a sort of a “state of the union” of the record / music industry and let the facts speak on their own. For example, the top seven physical chain retailers accounted for 44% of music sales in 2008, and the fact is it’s getting harder and harder for the labels to work with these outlets. Last year, Circuit City—which was the 9th largest music retailer in 2008—ceased operations and Virgin Megastore began closing all of their U.S. stores. Borders (the 6th largest retailer of music) has cut back in-store floor space by 30% to 7% of total floor space. Transworld has been hemorrhaging money, too. Similar changes have occurred throughout other segments of the traditional music industry, too.

I don’t assume too much in terms of what folks know or what they don’t. I’m more interested in talking about facts and data, and presenting a toolset that musicians and managers can use to acquire more fans, create an optimized Website with an effective offer page, determine what the proper offerings should be for your specific tribe, and create an overall online sales and marketing plan that works for a student’s particular situation.

Out of ignorance, or maybe just plain excitement, some people in the marketing advice business tend to write off traditional institutions, in favor of the shiny new things that the Internet has come to offer, whereas you’ve taken a stand — even written a book I hear — empathizing the importance of the roles that they still play. Why is it crucial to have a dynamic marketing mix, on- and offline, and how does a platform like Topspin play into this equation?

Mike King: I think you have to engage in all marketing activities that apply to you. I have students that are at completely different stages in their careers, students that are focused on completely different genres, and students that are touring consistently and those who are not. It’s not right to tell someone to focus exclusively on digital if that person is selling CDs consistently on the road or if that person is creating music for a genre or psychographic that still wants CDs. For example, I’ve been working with a fantastic children’s music band called Debbie and Friends, and once you look at the demographic and psychographic of her fans (and the parents of those fans!), you can see why some traditional options — like the creation of CDs — make sense for her.

Certainly touring and a solid merch plan, both traditional marketing initiatives, make sense to engage in. And there are still examples of developing bands that have emerged from indie physical retail. Physical retail and distribution are much more convoluted than online retail and distribution from a process standpoint, primarily due to co-op and the returns process. But again, I think that retail still makes sense for a subset of artists at a certain stage of their career. Of course distribution follows marketing and it does not make sense to look for a distribution deal prior to demand for your product, but if there is demand and you are not fulfilling it, I think you are leaving money on the table.

I think it comes down to the fact that the Internet has provided much more choice and an opportunity for musicians to participate in the process where in the past they might have been left out. But I don’t think it’s a best practice to completely omit physical marketing from your overall campaign strategy if you are at the right stage in your career for it, or if your psychographic dictates that you engage with them in that way.

In terms of Topspin, I think the major benefit of the software in terms of creating a dynamic mix of online and offline strategies is multifaceted. First, there’s rich data pulled in from a number of sources right into the platform. You can see in real time what folks are saying about you on blogs and on Twitter, and engage with these folks immediately. You can see spikes in activity on Last.fm, Facebook, and MySpace, and use that information in whatever way you want to help focus and direct your campaign. You can also see how your fanbase is interacting with your content, both in terms of sales from your site, as well as with any widgets that you have released in the wild. From a physical standpoint, I think the data that you gather from Topspin can help you to more effectively nurture the artist/fan relationship, too. For example, you can sort your list of fans in any number of different ways, including by geography or by rank in terms of sales. So as an example, if my band is touring in San Francisco, I can sort my fans by those that live in the area, and then cut that list into those that have purchased from me in the past. I could then provide these super fans with free tickets to the show, or any other value-add to help nurture the relationship. Also, because all of the Topspin widgets are trackable, you can also set up content sharing contests, and reward your core influencers with something of value, or encourage them to take their online support offline per market. It’s a really robust and customizable tool, and Topspin supports creativity with its use.

More importantly, what segments of an artist’s marketing strategy doesn’t Topspin replace? And, why do you think it’s important to clarify that Topspin isn’t — at least not anytime soon — the music marketing equivalent of the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Oven, you don’t just “Set it, and forget it!!” There will be countless hours (still) spent thinking, planning, testing, succeeding, failing, and trying the process all over again — with the exception that, for the most part, your efforts will be contained under one umbrella — that’s driven by data.

Mike King: I think Topspin is not a cure-all for the industry, nor is it the only tool that you should be using to put together an effective marketing campaign. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a great tool, and will benefit artists tremendously. But I think anyone who claims that they you can use their service to “set it and forget it,” as you say, is being disingenuous. There are truly so many variables and outlets that you need to think about and keep track of when you pull off your marketing campaign. For example, one thing that Topspin doesn’t do is distribute to third party online retail outlets like iTunes. Certainly the best practice for artists is to direct fans to their own site where they can provide tiered product offerings that are specifically geared to their fanbase, but the fact is that many fans are set in their ways and will continue to only look for you on iTunes or wherever else they routinely shop for music. I interviewed Derek Sivers for my book awhile back, and he had a really succinct thought on this topic: “There are millions of people who get all of their music from Rhapsody. If they search for you on Rhapsody, and you’re not there, they’ll forget you and move on. Same with eMusic. Same with iTunes. Same with Napster, etc. So make sure you’re available on all of these services. You are not hurting your iTunes sales by being on Rhapsody; you are only adding to your income.” I think this is accurate, and extends to direct-to-fan sales as well. While an artist’s sales margin can certainly be greater when selling direct to fan, the volume of sales an artist can see from established third-party outlets can outpace DTF sales, particularly for established artists. I would not recommend directing folks to a third party retailer from your site, but at the same point, you’d likely be losing sales if you do not have your music available on third party retail sites.

You also mention data in your question. Topspin is tremendous with data and analytics, but it’s not the only tool you should be using, in my opinion. Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for musicians (and Topspin integrates with it well). I also think Duncan Freeman is doing some really interesting things with Band Metrics, and there are dozens of other tools out there that help with analyzing other verticals like Twitter. I think that Topspin is a fantastic tool, but not the only tool you should consider.

Now, to maintain a certain degree of objectivity here and, at the same time, address an issue that’s sure to be brought up in the comments, I have to talk about the price tag on the course. It’s rather expensive. Blah, Blah, musicians don’t have that much money. But, to frame this differently, as put forth by Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture, “Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” Why do you think there are there brick walls, like this and others, surrounding Topspin Media? What purpose do they serve? Are they there for a reason?

Mike King: I really think the course can be considered an investment in your future. I don’t see it as all that different than an artist investing in a new guitar or amp to improve their sound, or investing in Pro Tools to produce their music themselves. Along with super-serving your existing fanbase, a big part of direct-to-fan marketing is to use certain tools and techniques to acquire new fans that you can continue to communicate with for years to come. I don’t think it is unrealistic to think that the course is an expense that musicians can recoup down the line.

The course is three months long, and over that period we’re doing a dozen hour-long chats covering all aspects of online marketing in near real time, on top of the extensive written content and multimedia content. To be honest, the course would make a 250 page book if I was to print it all out, and it took about a year to write. The course was written by myself and Shamal, with input from multiple people at Topspin, including Ian, Gary Brotman (who runs the artist services side of Topspin), Adam Bates (who is the Director of Marketing and R&D), and many others. Also, I’m inviting many of the Topspin folks to our weekly video/audio chats, so you have the opportunity to interact on a one-on-one basis with them (and me) directly. I’ve also got a ton of media throughout the course, including exclusive videos with Ian, Adam, Peter Brambl, and Shamal covering general best marketing practices as well as presenting an in-depth view of everything you need to know about the software.

Plus, I’ve also got some top-notch instructors teaching the course, like Jason Feinberg, Jason Kadlec, and Jeff Straw, who are all living online music marketing and Topspin everyday. They are incredible resources. Lastly, there is no other course out there that teaches this stuff. I feel really proud of the content that we’ve created, and I legitimately feel it’s beneficial for all artists/managers that want to understand Topspin in-depth, and gain a professional level understanding of online marketing. In terms of the criteria that Topspin has set up for artists to use their software directly, I’m probably not the best person to ask. It’s public knowledge that Topspin’s business plan is fundamentally different than other services, which charge artists a fee, no matter how many sales they generate using their software. Topspin only makes money when the artist does.

From what I understand, part of the reason for the brick walls surrounding Topspin Media is to ensure that “best practices” are being used. For the most part, because of how radically they are intertwined with the degree of success that one might hope for when using the service. It’s sort of a “preventative measure.” To ‘prevent’ people who don’t know ‘best practices’ from using the service, from not getting the results they were expecting, and from getting upset with the service because it didn’t work like they thought it would. Why are best practices so important? How have you integrated them into the course material? And, why do they have such an impact on results?

Mike King: Certainly with any service—be it ReverbNation, Topspin, Nimbit, Bandcamp, or any others—it’s in everyone’s best interest that folks are properly trained on using the software, as well as properly trained on overall best marketing practices. You don’t want folks out there unhappy with the service when, in reality, it was a lack of understanding of marketing principles and best practices that is the core reason they are not seeing growth in their acquisition or sales numbers. All these services are just tools, basically, and like any tool, if you are not using it properly your results will not be fantastic. The course is filled with best practices, from proper optimization techniques to help with search visibility (which along with direct traffic is usually one of the highest converting areas), to ways you can help identify your psychographic, best practices with third party social media outlets and other acquisition focused techniques. We also go in-depth on forecasting models designed to help you estimate how much income you might see from your digital touch points.

As a side note, there are real numbers and strategies presented in this course from several artists that have been kind enough to provide a look under the hood of their campaign. So when we talk about best practices with landing pages and offer pages, or when we talk about the importance of upselling, we can see exactly what other bands have done, and what the results were. I think it’s very helpful to take this information out of the theoretical and bring it all into real life, which we do in most all of the lessons throughout the course. Overall, I think the course helps to provide a road map for best practices in one of the only growth areas in marketing, and in terms of results, because Topspin has been so open with sharing their data, you can see exactly what happens when best practices are not followed, too.

This, of course, brings up another important question… How would an artist or their manager for that matter, know if they are at the point in their career where an investment like this is justifiable. When you have conversations like this, as I imagine you have—countless times—what do you tell people? How do you go about determining if they would benefit from TopSpin Media, and whether or not they are capable of taking things to the next level?

Mike King: On the core level, I think you shouldn’t be marketing yourself unless there is a demand for what you do. This also goes back to your question on integrating physical and digital marketing. Let’s look at live events as an example. If you are playing in your local area, and you are not gaining traction, folks are not blown away by your show, there is little momentum with the fans, and your permission-based sign up list is not growing, then it probably makes sense to hit the woodshed and work on your music first. Topspin will not make your music good, and without amazing music and a killer live show, it does not make sense to spend the money on a marketing campaign. There are millions of bands out there, and your your music has to connect with folks in a way that 99% of the music out there does not. Once you start generating a real following, have demand for your product, and you can effectively identify your psychographic—this is when you should start marketing yourself. So I think you have to look at what is happening with your music and the response to it. Start small with your marketing efforts and, as you grow, think how a tool like Topspin or others can help amplify your existing efforts. Marketing tools are good at amplifying your efforts, but you have to have something there to work with first.

To sort of cap this off, what has your experience been like teaching a course like this for the first time? What are some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome—beyond “the curse of knowledge”—in writing this course? And, now that you and the other teachers have seen students interact with and learn the material, what are some of the realizations you’ve had, in trying to make your insights are as actionable as possible for everyone in the course?

Mike King: Writing and teaching this course has been deeply fulfilling for me. I was just at SXSW and met up with some of my students down there, including LJ Scott, Anthony Erickson from a band called Fulton Reed, and Susie Codd. We’re in week eleven in the course, and these folks are putting the best practices to use right now, and it’s just amazing to see the stuff we have been talking about for three months being implemented in a way that positively effects these musicians. I think all of us are looking for the way forward in the new music business landscape, and I feel grateful to present real information to artists, based on data and real world examples, that actually helps musicians to navigate their careers in a positive way.

In terms of challenges, some of this stuff is not easy to grasp the first time through. I’ve created flash animations, use videos, and have some audio in the course to help explain some of the more difficult concepts we discuss, such as the product pricing and forecasting documents that we go through. It was also challenging to present everything in a way that folks who are less familiar with the concepts could easily understand it, while also presenting the material in a dynamic way for students who are more advanced. Also, Topspin is developing new initiatives so quickly, that it has been challenging to keep up with them! The great part about the online course is that I can update this information on the fly—it is a living, breathing entity that I can adjust as necessary as new features are released by Topspin, as new third party entities are unveiled, and as some of the best practices that exist today change tomorrow. It’s definitely been interesting to see how the students have interacted with the material that we have written, and I’m sure we’ll make some adjustments based on the feedback.

Some succinct thoughts in this interview from the guitar player in Radiohead who is not named Jonny Greenwood or Thom Yorke. Ed makes two good points in here, when talking about the physical release of In Rainbows. My paraphrase:

A) consumers are set in their ways, and if you are not making your product available in all formats (and stores) you are limiting your pool of potential consumers (as well as leaving money on the table). It’s a great point, and something artists need to consider on a large scale (whether to release digital only vs physical and digital) as well on a micro level (releasing music to 3rd party streaming retailers with lower pay rates, vs releasing only to higher paying permanent download options like iTunes and Amazonmp3).

B) artists need an “equitable, fair, and balanced relationship” with whomever they decide to work with to help them market and sell their music. This goes for labels, or any other artists service based company. As Ed says, many label deals are “an analog model in a digital era.”

Watch the full interview here, courtesy of paidcontent.co.uk

I feel like I owe an apology for the lack of activity on my blog lately. While I’ve been better about keeping up with Twitter, I’ve definitely let the posts slip here. A resolution of mine for 2010 is to get back on the horse and get the posting schedule back on track. Not that it is any excuse, but I’ve been particularly busy with creating content in a couple of other ways. Here’s what I have been up to over the past few months.

I’ve written two new marketing courses that are enrolling now for Berkleemusic’s next term, starting January 11th. As I have mentioned on this blog before, Online Music Marketing with Topspin (co-authored by Topspin’s Shamal Ranasinghe) will teach you how to use Topspin’s unique marketing, management, and content distribution platform to help you market and retail direct to your fans. In the course, students will develop the in-depth marketing expertise necessary to properly execute a successful sales and marketing campaign using Topspin. You can watch some videos of Topspin’s CEO Ian Rogers and myself talking about online marketing and the course here.

I also just finished a second online music marketing course called Online Music Marketing: Campaign Strategies, Social Media, and Digital Distribution. This course covers some key areas that all marketers need to focus on, such as social media marketing, effective use of data to direct you campaigns, what partners you should be aware of, and much more. By the end you’ll have a fully timed, integrated, and optimized online marketing plan that you can use to generate interest in your music, acquire new fans, and sell your music online. It’s a great companion course to Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail, with a greater focus on the online side of marketing.

Finally, the companion book to Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail is done and available. The book contains additional interviews and content which complements the online course of the same name. I’m giving away a free chapter and selling the book on a discount here if you’d like to check it out.

That’s all from me. I wish you the best in 2010!

Here’s a video of me talking about the new Online Music Marketing: Campaign Strategies, Social Media, and Digital Distribution course:

If you’ve been following my blog, you might be aware that I am a fan of artists and managers A) starting off by doing what they can themselves to help market and sell their own music, and B) seeking out partnerships with companies that can help them to do more than they are able to do themselves, for a fair price, and C) building up, communicating, and monetizing their own list in a meaningful way, using best practices with direct-to-fan marketing. I think direct-to-fan not only has the potential of generating more margin for artists now, but if done properly, DTF (direct-to-fan) can also help to ensure that artists are building a passionate base for the future. It’s not the only marketing segment that matters, but it is a segment that all musicians and managers should be paying close attention to, and integrating into their other traditional marketing and sales campaigns.

I’ve been working with Shamal, Gary, Ian, Adam and others at Topspin for the past 8 months or so creating a course dedicated to outlining the best practices that folks should be aware of in terms of online DTF (and traditional) marketing, and how Topspin’s software can be used to help facilitate these best practices. I’ve had the good fortune of not only taking a look inside Topspin’s platform to analyze their key features – a content management system that hosts your media assets, a fan management system that collects, organizes, and analyzes fan data, detailed reporting features, e-mail management system, widget creation and viral tracking, and more – but also to see the best practices and real data that Topspin has generated from the 150+ campaigns they have run over the past couple of years. While every marketing and sales campaign is different, this course presents folks with a unique opportunity to “look behind the curtain” to see exactly what has worked for some bands, how they set up their offers, the income they generated from these offers, and how they went about acquiring new fans. I think it’s helpful information.

I sat down with Ian here at Berklee in August to do a quick overview of the course, which turned into a bit of an online marketing clinic. Below is one of the clips from our conversation. To see them all, click here.

Online Music Marketing with Topspin is enrolling now, and begins on January 11th. If you are interested in learning more about the course, feel free to connect with one of our Admissions Advisors at 1.866.BERKLEE (US) or 617.747.2146 (International).

Tom Friedman, author and foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times, doesn’t write much about music. But his piece “The New Untouchables” is a column well worth reading for those looking for a way forward in the music business. It may sound obvious, but the truth is that many of the fundamental techniques used for success in the “non-music” business world are the same techniques that can be applied to folks looking for success in the “music” business world.

Check this out, from Friedman’s piece:

A Washington lawyer friend recently told me about layoffs at his firm. I asked him who was getting axed. He said it was interesting: lawyers who were used to just showing up and having work handed to them were the first to go because with the bursting of the credit bubble, that flow of work just isn’t there. But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables.

Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.

It’s not hard to see the connection between lawyers and musicians, here, is it? Imagining new opportunities, new ways to recruit work, and inventing smarter ways to do old jobs is a great plan off attack for business folks AND musicians.

Bruce Houghton from Hypebot initiated a great discussion on his blog a few weeks back about his ideas that “there have always been skills beyond just making music that, if not required, certainly made success more likely.” It’s an opinion that I share, too.

I definitely would not frame any musician in the “untouchable” camp (brands are only as good as the trust their fans have in them), but generating leverage by doing as much as you can yourself (with the help of a good team, if possible), analyzing data to do it smarter, and figuring out ways to creatively attract new fans is great advice for any musician interested in building a more sustainable career.

It’s likely that you’ve heard of Jonathan Coulton. Profiled by NPR and the New York Times, Coulton has been a full time independent musician since he quit his computer programming gig in 2005. After initiating an ambitious project of releasing a new song a week, Coulton started to gain momentum, making what he described as “a reasonable middle-class living” — between $3,000 and $5,000 a month — by selling CDs and digital downloads of his work on his own site and iTunes.

Coulton is prolific in his conversations with his fans online, spending time each day personally answering every email he receives. While his direct to fan approach to sales and marketing includes a partnership with CD Baby (who warehouse and ship his physical CD, as well as get his music to the online retailers like iTunes and Amazon), Coulton’s most lucrative source of income is selling online from his Website.

Check out an audio interview that Scott Kirsner, author of the new book, Fans, Friends & Followers, did with Jonathan Coulton. Interesting ideas on communicating with fans, how Jonathan is using Creative Commons, his primary sources of revenue, his trepidation about signing to a label, and more.

Pay particular attention to Coulton’s recipe for success:

• Solo artist = low overhead when touring
• Records in a home studio = low production costs
• Distributes most of his music digitally = no co-op fees at retail, lower distribution fee
• Fosters a direct connection to his fans = fans are more emotionally involved in what he does
• Few middlemen involved in the chain = most of his income is his alone

Check out the audio interview here:

Anyone that has been following music business trends for the past few years is likely familiar with the high profile direct to fan campaigns (campaigns that focus on the monetization of an artist’s fan base directly) that Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Imogen Heap, and others have been involved with recently. As Mike Masnick put it in his 2009 NARM Keynote, the recipe for effective direct to fan campaigns can be boiled down to: Connecting with Fans (CwF) + Providing a Reason to Buy (RtB) = $$$. Makes sense, right? The difficulties arise when you consider that there are 5 million bands on MySpace, all of which are vying for the consumer’s attention. It’s easy for NIN and Radiohead to connect with fans, the skeptics’ note, as they have had years of major label support and hundreds of thousands of existing followers to work with. How can a developing artist in this climate differentiate themselves from all the other bands out there?

The answer can be slightly more nuanced than Masnick’s formula above, and to me, is based on a four key elements: 1) setting up an effective offer page on your site that is tailored to your marketing goals and where you are in your marketing cycle, 2) expanding your digital touch points through creative fan acquisition techniques, 3) integrating your online and offline marketing towards the same goal, and lastly, 4) once you’ve created your groundswell of support and fans, integrating effective 3rd party digital and physical marketing, sales, and distribution (such as Tunecore) outlets into the mix. Let’s illustrate these elements with two examples.

Example 1: Fanfarlo

Creating an Effective Offer Page Tailored to Acquisition

Although they were supported by NME in their hometown of London (who have called their release “a carefully orchestrated treat”), and have some high profile fans in the members of Sigur Rós, Fanfarlo found that they were having a tough time breaking into the US market. Fanfarlo’s music is undeniably great (aside: the first step, of course, in any marketing campaign is to have great music. Without this, any DTF marketing campaign will fail), and as such, the plan for breaking Fanfarlo relied a lot on getting as many folks to experience their music as possible, with the end goal of gaining enough interest to pack the Mercury Lounge in NYC (300 capacity).

The band initiated their acquisition-based campaign by looking at what assets and connections they could leverage. Fanfarlo developed a low-cost video, dug up some unreleased tracks, and recorded new acoustic versions. Of particular note, the band’s management reached out to Sigur Rós, who agreed to mention Fanfarlo in one of their emails to their fans.

Prior to any outreach from Sigur Rós, the band knew it was crucial for them to create an offer on their site that would make their music as accessible as possible, while at the same time create a degree of urgency. Again, as monetization was not the driving force behind their campaign at this stage in their marketing process, Fanfarlo decided the best course of action for building up their base was to provide curious potential fans with the opportunity to purchase their record for $1.00 (for a limited time), in exchange for an email address (which provided the band with permission to engage with these fans directly at a later date). They band adjusted their site accordingly, employing best practices with SEO and Web IA, and created an offer page dedicated to highlighting their music and making it easy to purchase via one click off the offer page. This was the result:

Along with the redesigned offer page on their site, the band adjusted all of their social media pages (visibility on MySpace, Wikipedia, Facebook, Last.fm, iLike, YouTube) with appropriate offer copy/images, and links to the offer on their proper site. Once all the backend was done and Fanfarlo was ready for the traffic, Sigur Rós hyped the band in an email to their fans and Fanfarlo essentially had an “offer you can’t refuse” waiting for them. In exchange, the band built up their email list, created a viral buzz on their new record, and not only had enough interest to pack the Mercury Lounge in NYC, they had to upgrade to the larger Bowery Ballroom!

Example 2: The Lights Out

Expanding Your Digital Touch Points through Social Media & Integrating Your Online and Offline Marketing

All marketing campaigns are different, and not everyone has the luxury of having support from major bands like Sigur Rós. But no matter where you are at in your career, core marketing principals hold true, particularly when it comes to effectively using social media to engage your fans and building up your base. The best example of social media campaigns are creative ideas that leverage the viral nature of social media to engage fans and effect change in not only the digital world, but in a band’s physical campaign as well (which of course is still incredibly important to any overall marketing campaign).

The Lights Out is a Boston-based band working to raise their hometown visibility and acquire new fans to positively impact their touring base throughout the Northeast. On the heels of an oppressive heat wave in Boston in mid August, the band initiated a Slush Puppie “flash mob” online marketing campaign. The band found the appropriate location for the event via polling their Twitter followers:

Once the location was chosen, the band set up a Facebook event, which allowed them to update the status of the Slush Mob, get an idea on who was coming, and communicate directly with those that expressed interest.

The band then set up a Twitter hashtag (#), which organized all messaging around the event into a single live channel on Twitter search. The hashtag use also had the all-important added benefit of becoming a “viral generator” for the event, piquing the interest of the band’s follower’s fans, and influencing activity at a level outside of what the band could do with their fanbase directly.

Once the existing fans were engaged in the event, Boston-based bloggers picked up on it, the market’s alternative weekly featured info on the event, and popular Boston-based event and social media Twitterers did the same.

The band continued Tweeting from the event and after, and shared photos of the turnout using Twitpic:

So, what did all this mean to the band’s stated goal of raising their visibility and acquiring new fans?

The data:

• 20% increase in unique web site visitors

• 24 times increase in daily twitter followers

• 3,352 impressions from media coverage

• 66,160 impressions from Tweets and Retweets

• 195 impressions from Twitpics

• Approximate Total: 70,000 impressions

New fans also direct-messaged the band, telling them how much they enjoyed the idea/their music and expressing interest in attending future gigs. And because this social media campaign included an offline component, new fans were able to bond with the band in a more personal way.

Again, all marketing campaigns are different, and should be employed in a way that focuses on the strengths and opportunities of the respective band. The specific tools will certainly continue to change as we move forward, but the principle of determining your core goal and engaging / developing your fan base to reach this goal will not. What’s particularly exciting to me is that artists have the option to market and distribute their music directly, with less gatekeeper involvement, than ever before. We’re in the early stages of direct to fan campaigns, but I think it is undeniable that there is a tremendous amount of growth potential in the segment – and is an area that artists, managers and others (forward thinking, artist-serviced based companies, for example) have to look at very closely.