Music Business and Trend Mongering » Sales

Case Study: Topspin Student Matt Stine on Connecting With Fans And Giving Them Good Reasons To Buy

mking — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:08:29 +0000

I had Matt Stine as a student in the inaugural run of my Online Music Marketing with Topspin course, and it’s a thrill to see him put the sales and marketing tactics we discussed in the course into practice with his artist Clinton Curtis. It’s equally thrilling to see his work presented in outlets that I admire, like Mike Masnick’s Techdirt.

I’ve pasted Matt’s guest post in Techdirt below. Congratulations Matt!

Case Study: Clinton Curtis Connects With Fans And Gives Them Good Reasons To Buy His New Album

Ever since Mike Masnick introduced the concept of CwF + RtB, he has been confronted time and time again with the argument that this concept can only work for well-known artists with large established fanbases. And time after time Mike has provided evidence that CwF + RtB can work for any band or musician at any level. Clinton Curtis’ latest release campaign for his new album, 2nd Avenue Ball, is a prime example of how a new artist can use the concepts behind Mike’s formula to build a foundation for a successful career while earning money along the way from a small group of “super” fans.

Clinton Curtis’ 2nd Avenue Ball comes out today, March 22nd but it has been available for Pre-Order since March 1st. My company, 27 Sound, has been responsible for every aspect of the campaign, from producing and recording the music, to designing ClintonCurtis.com to developing the marketing and promotion strategy. Although technically this is Clinton’s second album, Clinton is still very much a new artist, and we treated this latest release as if it was his first. Clinton had been playing a lot of shows locally and regionally over the past year, and acquired a decent amount of email addresses at those shows. We knew that a small percentage of those fans would likely support Clinton going forward. Our goal was to offer something unique to those fans already in Clinton’s network and at the same time create ways for Clinton to connect with potential new fans.

In designing Clinton’s website, we wanted to make sure we were giving Clinton’s fans a reason to return to the site on a regular basis. We created two new elements — CC Radio and CC Connect. CC Radio is essentially a bi-monthly live show, broadcast directly to clintoncurtis.com. Each episode features members of Clinton’s band, guest musicians, friends and even Clinton’s fans, getting together at 27 Sound Studios to perform a solid hour of music. Powered by Ustream, it’s really simple to use, easy to integrate into the website and shareable across all major social networks. In fact, Clinton’s album release party will actually be a CC Radio episode (9:30PM EST tonight, Tuesday March 22nd) which is a much more effective use of time and money than trying to throw a big party at a NYC venue. CC Radio is an exciting way to keep fans coming back to the site and a great way for Clinton to connect directly with his them. It has been a huge success in only it’s first two months. The fans love it, and the easy sharing capability brings more traffic to Clinton’s online store.

Once fans reach Clinton’s Online store we wanted to be sure that we gave them plenty of incentive to buy directly from us. We created CC Connect, Clinton’s “VIP” fan club, to add value to all of our direct-to-fan offerings. Any package purchased through clintoncurtis.com comes bundled with a lifetime membership to CC Connect. CC Connect members get free download packs each month featuring exclusive previously unreleased music, live recordings, studio demos, audio from CC Radio episodes and more. They also get ticket and merch discounts as well as an entire fully-produced album recorded exclusively for CC Connect members each year. By doing this we add a tremendous amount of value to each package we offer through the site, giving fans a good reason to buy.

For 2nd Avenue Ball, we worked hard to come up with a variety of packages that we think will please Clinton’s fans and drive their support. I won’t go into too much detail here on each one, but there are a couple of noteworthy items in the biggest, Super Fan Deluxe Package that I think might interest Techdirt readers.

Each of the 50 Deluxe packages come with gatefold vinyl packaging but the vinyl record inside is not Clinton’s album. We don’t yet have enough demand among Clinton’s fans to warrant manufacturing and selling vinyl, but we wanted to showcase the amazing album artwork we had from an incredible young artist, Matthew Burrows. We planned on putting high quality art prints of his work inside as an insert where the vinyl record would normally go. But then we had the idea to also include an actual LP from Clinton’s personal vinyl collection. Along with the LP, each package comes with a note about what that album meant to Clinton and what significance it had to his musical upbringing. We thought this would be a cool way to make each package completely unique.

Then we thought to return the favor…. If people get a piece of Clinton’s favorite music, we should give them back some of their favorite songs, too. So anyone who orders this package gets an email from Clinton asking for their favorite song, and then Clinton records that song and sends it directly to their inbox. Yes, it will be a lot of work for us to put this together, but it will give each of these 50 fans something special that they really want. And who knows, maybe some great recordings will come of it! (In fact, almost all of these Deluxe packages have sold out at the time of writing this, and the song requests have been really cool, including one person who requested an original song that his 9 year old son wrote.)

These are just a few of the things that are unique about this campaign although there are many others (including the “Turn This CD Into A Coaster” Kit that comes with each disc!). Have a look over at clintoncurtis.com to see the package offers in more detail and explore around the site to see more ways Clinton is actively connecting with his fanbase. I would love to hear people’s thoughts and ideas on what we could be doing better. I always keep reminding our team that this is all an experiment and we need to adapt and change every day as we learn from the feedback we get from our fans. So visit the site and help us out!

Radiohead's Ed O’Brien on the Music Biz

mking — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:08:41 +0000

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

What Musicians Can Learn From iPhone App Developers

mking — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:43:58 +0000

It’s not all that surprising to read that some folks are making a killing from building apps for the iPhone. As of January ’09, over 500 million apps have been downloaded, and seeing that Apple takes a 30% cut on all apps (same as their fee for sales of music on iTunes), developers are taking in 70% of the revenue of these 500 million downloads. What IS interesting to me is the marketing behind these apps, and in particular, the way that some developers are using the concept of free to generate interest in their product.

The New York Times ran an article last week on Ethan Nicholas, the guy who built iShoot, an app that has generated $800,000 in sales in five months. Take a look at how his sales progressed:

“After the project was finished, Mr. Nicholas sent it to Apple for approval, quickly granted, and iShoot was released into the online Apple store on Oct. 19.

When he checked his account with Apple to see how many copies the game had sold, Mr. Nicholas’s jaw dropped: On its first day, iShoot sold enough copies at $4.99 each to net him $1,000. He and Nicole were practically “dancing in the street,” he said.

The second day, his portion of the day’s sales was about $2,000.

On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks. “That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I wondered if we could do better,” Mr. Nicholas said.

In January, he released a free version of the game with fewer features, hoping to spark sales of the paid version. It worked: iShoot Lite has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and many people have upgraded to the paid version, which now costs $2.99. On its peak day — Jan. 11 — iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies, which meant a $35,000 day’s take for Mr. Nicholas.”

Obviously, this is an extreme example of what can happen financially for app developers, but I do think that some comparisons can be made to musicians looking to generate interest in their music online. My friend John Snyder, who runs Artists House Music, once told me “the curse of the developing artist is anonymity, not piracy.” I do believe that some form of “free” makes sense for most artists; be it a download card distributed at live shows, select music available for free on your site (perhaps in exchange for an email address), live shows for download, etc.

Traditional one-size-fits-all physical retailers are failing – Virgin, Transworld, and Borders have all either closed up shop in the US, drastically cut back on music floor space, or are taking massive financial hits. I think a large part of the future of sales in the music business is online direct to fan relationships (with supporting offline components), where artists cultivate more extensive relationships with their fans, and in the process more effectively monetize traditional and non-traditional sales options. I think some part of “free” works to engage your existing fanbase, as well as turn casual fans into hard-core supporters.

Andrew Dubber has some good thoughts on the topic of free as well. Take a look at his post on “Why Give Away Music For Free.”