Anonymity versus Piracy
In the early stages of an artist’s career, anonymity is a much bigger problem than piracy. The primary goal should be to attempt to reach the critical mass needed to get onto the radar of nationally syndicated media. These early efforts should attempt to reach as many people as possible, even if it results in some lost earnings. The biggest difference between an international superstar and the rest of the talented, aspiring pop stars is mindshare. Get lots of mindshare, and a decent pop song is bound to sell.
Spreading your Music with Widgets and Music Players
A music widget is a small web application that adds some kind of functionality to a website. The advantage of these widgets is that they allow people to easily share music over a wide set of media platforms. Deezer is one company that is implementing a system for users to create widgets to share music. ReverbNation offers a music player for free and charges an additional fee to remove the ‘ReverbNation’ branding.
Posting Music to Groups
Some music social media sites sort music into categories and allow musicians to post information about their bands, music, songs, etc. These groups allow music fans to search for music in specific genres. This allows bands and musicians to target their audience based on the categorization of music. Introducing your music to web based music groups can be a great way to reach people beyond your region, especially in niche markets. The combination of search capabilities combined with widgets creates a platform where users can search and listen to music of any genre instantly, without any kind of gatekeeper, moderator, or curator to impose restrictions or promote certain bands.
Show Trading
A show trade is a deal where a band (band A) from one city or region opens for a band (Band B) in their home city with the expectation that band B will return the favor by opening for band A in the home city of band B. The benefit of this approach is that performing live in a nearby city for a similar band that has a larger audience base in each respective city, will give both bands opportunities for reaching new fans in close by communities.
Marketing to New Trends
A growth hacking technique that can be used to market your music is to identify new trends through analytics and then use those keywords as meta information for your music. This can work well if the music is similar and the analytic tools are well-suited to this approach. An example of this kind of growth hacking technique would be to immediately remix anything that goes viral on YouTube.
By Jack Johnston
Jack Johnston has a Master’s of Arts in Applied Linguistics from the New School University, MBA and MSML degrees from WGU.