Music Marketing Chill Out – Article Content Marketing as a SEO strategy

October 2nd, 2009

Matt and the team at kurb promotions do online promotion and web marketing for musicians – as well as small business marketing – email kurbpromo@gmail.com to learn how we can put together a 3 online music marketing month package including social media marketing, blog set up and promo, SEO and search optimisation, email list management, graphic design, web design, youtube video marketing and more!

Traffic is visitors to your site. Potential fans, sales, revenue.

Google IS traffic, and SEO is the strategy of getting the most traffic from Google searches.

At the end of the day, ranking highly in Google for niche keyword terms is the most potentially successful strategy but it’s also one of the most difficult. Also, musicians have found it hard to monetize their traffic, the random search visitors.

Now someone who knows about optimising your web pages can do your meta tags and such in half an hour. You need to be responsible for producing new content that keeps your site looking fresh for google, this is why blogs are very advantageous because they allow for easy publishing of fresh content.

The most important part of SEO is link building. Now we’ve discussed before two of the most popular methods of building links

- commenting on “do follow” blogs with high “PR” (pagerank)

- syndicating content or “article marketing”

That’s what we’re doing today. I discussed also earlier how we could syndicate our digital content such as blogs by posting them to myspace and facebook and wordpress and blogger and how this would be effective sndication or distribution as long as each one linked back to your home base – either your website or your main blog, your main platformwhere you engage fans.

Now I’m talking about using article directories, submitting some content as an “article” to be published by other webmasters with permission as long as they include your link, which by spreading your link around in this way, will build you quality one way links back to your site.

Now article submission does have some guidelines. You’re attempting to be informative and provide value, so the better your article the more likely it will be picked up by other webmasters. You will also be strictly limited on the amount of links you may use, often just one or two linking back to your sites in a author’s footer that is included when and wherever the article is published.

But to get maximum exposure and benefit from this, I’ll have this article submitted to between 100-300 article directories by an outsourced worker. That’s 100-300 high quality backlinks to your site. That would take most people days, and these are the benefits

I’m happy to provide this service for you as part of a package is you contact me at kurbpromo@gmail.com

Otherwise the best place to start your article submission as a SEO marketing strategy is probably

http://ezinearticles.com

This article directory site in particular seems to carry a LOT of google juice, coming up very high on some pretty common searches. It’s a good place to learn about the do’s and don’ts of article submissions.

Just remember your author’s box with your links back to your site are the most important thing – that’s why you’re doing this to get those backlinks with the nice juicy keywords in the anchor text.

So article directory submissions as a marketing strategy is one of the leading tactics for SEO right now because the links will build themselves of your content is relevant and valuable, while submissions alwaysgenerate high quality backlinks from authoritative article directory sites.

MY ARTICLE FOR SUBMISSION

Here’s an article I’ve produced to promote a range of my clients working in similar genres.
I’ve attempted to frame the article as an introduction to new artists making chill out music but also added quite a bit of information about the genre so the article comes across as more informative as and less.

With article marketing we don’t depend on the article being picked up and read to any significant level, it’s about the backlinks, but if we can get organic click through traffic, all the better.

You’ll notice I provide also an extensive list of relevant artists and labels. I always encourage this kind of detailing because of the authority this bestows on a range of long tail niche keywords.

Now take note:

I’ve added the links because it’s a blog post, and a few backlinks aren’t going to hurt, when it’s an article for submission there’ll be no links within the body, there’ll be room for your links in the authors box.

NEW DOWNTEMPO AND CHILL OUT MUSIC PRODUCERS

Looking for new chill out and downbeat or downtempo music? There are some amazing new downbeat producers and DJ’s producing new downbeat music.

Here are some of my suggestions:

www.Ganga.dk – Denmark Chill Out Downbeat producer Ganga, hailing from Copenhagen describes himself as a musical chameleon. The classically trained musician and producer entered the world of electronic music with his debut album entitled ‘I Dream About Trees’ which was released on Music For Dreams. It was an album inspired by trees, which he professes a general fondness for. The album created quite a stir in the downbeat/chillout/lounge genre, and numerous tracks from the album are compiled again and again on the biggest chillout compilations, Buddha Bar, Real Ibiza, Cafe Mambo, Hed Kandi Serve Chilled, No Stress to name but a few.

Budding young DJ, producer and songwriter from Auckland, New Zealand, jr kong began his life long musical pursuit at the age of five. From playing in school bands to church choirs to then scoring music for short movies; jr kong’s musical interests are wide and varied. His influences and production styles include, electronica, hip hop, rock and folk. And he if often blurring the lines between musical styles and conventions. A sound that might easily fit between DJ Shadow and some real geeky guy. Jr kong’s debut album is 12 Inch Biscuit Press, an electronic mix of urban styles with a distinct kiwi vibe.

“Oceanic Chill” is a new compilation CD of chill out, downbeat, dub, trip hop, ambient and all round mellow grooves featuring 23 fresh artists brought together as proof that the underground is alive, well, and very relaxed about the whole thing. A sumptuous selection is presented from artists all hailing from Pacific nations to create a rich aural repository lovingly compiled by DJ Romantech head of ..bass, the Auckland, NZ based DJ/Producer collective. And from the sheer depth and capacity of sites such as myspace, the Oceanic release feeds the best elements accessible together into a potent brew of soothing rhythms and melodic beats. DJ Romantech is an Auckland, New Zealand Liquid Funk DJ.

CHILL OUT MUSIC

Chill out music takes it’s name from the slang term to relax and is applied as a term to cover many styles of mellow, slower paced music made by modern producers with beats and samples in the electronic music scene.

“Downtempo” or “Downbeat” music is described as a laidback form of electronic music similar to ambient music but with a beat or a groove.

Another related genre is Trip hop, though Downtempo usually uses a slower tempo than Trip-hop. The relaxing and often sensual or romantic feel of most downtempo music, along with the absence or minimal use of lyrics or vocals, it is a popular form of background music in ‘chill out rooms’ of dance parties, many alternative cafes, and is often marketed as being good music for lovemaking.

The genres associated with chill-out are mostly Ambient, Trip-hop, Nu jazz, Ambient House, Ambient Trance, New Age and other sub-genres of Downtempo – a major branch of electronic music. Sometimes the Easy Listening sub-genre Lounge is considered to belong to the chill-out collection as well.

The term “Chill out music”, as well as the genre itself, originated in chill rooms that were set up by DJs around the club dance floors to give patrons a chance to get away from the hectic dance music vibe and mellow out with this style of chilled music. Chill out as a musical genre is synonymous with the more recently popularized terms such as “smooth electronica” and “soft techno” and is a loose genre of music blurring into several other very distinct styles of electronic and lo-fi music.

Artists include Air, Fila Brazillia, Portishead, Afterlife, Massive Attack, Chris Coco, Zero 7, Enigma, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Lemongrass, Tosca, Monte La Rue, Nightmares on Wax, The Dining Rooms, Bluetech, Sounds from the Ground, Jens Buchert, A Man Called Adam, Electric Skychurch, Mystical Sun, Single Cell Orchestra, Alex Cortiz, Boards of Canada, William Orbit, Groove Armada, Leftfield, Lenny Ibizarre, Timonkey, Banco de Gaia, and Lemon Jelly. Some of the labels with the most important recording rosters of downbeat and chill out artists and largest catalogs of releases and compilations are: Life Enhancing Audio, ESL Music, Instinct Records, Café del Mar, United Recordings, Water Music, Pork Recordings, Muti Music, Ninja Tune, Mole Listening Pearls, Six Degrees Records, Waveform, Compost Records, Interchill, Cyberset Music, Liquid Sound Design, and Ultimae.

Bonus Recommended New Zealand Chill Out

Bluevibe Studio
Stray Theories

Matt and the team at kurb promotions do online promotion and web marketing for musicians – as well as small business marketing – email kurbpromo@gmail.com to learn how we can put together a 3 online music marketing month package including social media marketing, blog set up and promo, SEO and search optimisation, email list management, graphic design, web design, youtube video marketing and more!

Luxury accomodation Cambridge
Luxury apartment Taupo
Shop online USA ship to NZ
Kids Fun with the crocodettes from, Nelson, New Zealand
Marty Baggen, singer/songwriter; Eugene, Oregon
Reactive Doze, industrial/alternative/noise; Melbourne Australia
Juliana Down, Rock – Dubai, UAE
Auckland Painting – home painters; Auckland, New Zealand
Azumuth – Rock; Melbourne, Australia

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Late Night Blog Branding Crisis: Blog Comments Around

October 2nd, 2009

Writing shorter posts is one thing, but if I’m going to ride the next digital wave I’d better smarten my act up around here. Putting a bit more effort into my posts, y’know small things, like finishing sentences.

Writing the post and then saving it and coming back to it when I’m ready to edit it seriously.

Posting at a smart time, like a weekday morning or afternoon, not in the dark hours of sunday morning.

As I said, I’m doing okay, but if I want to lift my game and get up there having these muddled posts is no good, you’ve got to make a commitment to value for your audience.
It’s lower value, lower quality if you’re not making the effort to be presentable.

It’s easy to say oh y’know it’s just my blog, i’m just gonna throw some words up to keep it fresh with my SEO and such but if you really want to engage and go from hundreds to thousands of daily visitors, you’re going to have to present a “professional” image.

You need to look as if you’re serious.

Spelling mistakes and unfinished paragraphs with concepts that go all over the place is not going to be taking me to the next level. I’ll get leads sure. You’ll pick up some fans here and there. But not that many.

Gerd Leonhard made a great metaphor while he was drifting down the digital content stream in his little boat in a recent talk, he compared your audience to puppies. Feed them content and they’ll be the ones waiting for you to come home, who’ll follow you everywhere.

You can’t ask a puppy for $1 on Itunes. All you can do is give it love.

Ariel Hyatt has an amazing post over at Music Think Tank.

http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/the-ugly-man-behind-the-curtain-in-music-publicity.html

It’s sad the decaying structures of the traditional music industry model are still held in place. This is indicative of our general global situation here, vested interests have too much too lose to progress.

This is what a recession looks like to me. It’s when a lot of accepted practices that no longer provide value are removed from the production chain out of necessity.

It’s a correction for most. Except for those who were right all along.

The digital music realm is only going to thrive in these conditions.

I’m not saying 2009 will be all candy. But if you can survive it, it’s just going to get easier.

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From Band Manager to Fan Manager at Music. Marketing. Management.

October 2nd, 2009

Get 10% off a kurb online music marketing management package in US$ when you ask for a “fan manager” – 3 month campaigns now only $US450! email kurbpromo@gmail.com

I’ve been talking a bit about “fan management” recently on this blog.

Because maybe you don’t need to find a band manager for your music, you need to find a fan manager.

This is the new model. You might still need a traditional manager figure who goes into bat for the artist to bust balls and make sure they’re being looked after. But now that the music industry has changed to enable musicians to engage fans directly, we start talking about a “fan manager”.

This describes the changing role of band and music management to incorporate tasks that face the reality of creating revenue from music because increasingly now, you’ve got to go directly to the fan.

And you’ve got to understand the complexities of how fans are engaged online.

I’m only talking about this now because I turned up on the http://www.fanmanager.net site and they also have a blog at http://fanmanager.wordpress.com- which was how I found them, their was a trackback on their link to a Lefsetz post.

It’s funny that they refer to themselves as “fan managers” because that’s a term I’d begun using that recognises where the most important work is going on in the music industry now, and that’s enabling artists and enabling fans, not making backroom deals with high rolling music industry dons.

Now Fan Manager the business intrigued me and I thought was worth a mention because they are obviously dealing with a higher level of client than I do and most likely charge accordingly. But they run a very comprehensive service. It’s inspired me to start thinking how I can bring my service levels up in the way these guys have because they’re projecting a powerful solution to cover the great many varying needs of artists building a brand and interacting with fans in a digital era.

Here’s what they were offering in their service packages. Yes, I know many many shonky music service websites promise so much – I’ve just about seen them all – but I saw a lot of evidence on the site that these guys were actually doing this stuff, not just providing a big long list to impress people!

* Fan Club Management
* Street Team Creation, Building and Management
* Work Exchange Programs (Merchandise Booth, E-Mail List Teams, Festival Teams)
* Database Management
* HTML Newsletter creation
* Online Street Team Creation, Building and Management (E-Teams)
* Social Media Creation, Design, and Management (Social Networks, Blogs, Micro Blogs & Widgets)
* Viral Marketing Research
* Viral Marketing Campaigns (outreach on blogs, message boards, forums, chat rooms, etc)
* Comprehensive reporting using pictures, digital reports, and screen shots
* Creative Contests and Promotions
* Setting Up and Overseeing Special events such as listening parties, DVD Parties, and meet and greet events
* Graphic Design (handbills, posters, stickers, admats, etc)
* Printing (B+W, 4 color process, cutting, and sorting)
* Website Design, E-Cards, and Animated Banners
* Website Back End Management
* Tour Date entries using all mediums
* Shipping (FedEx, Priority Mail)

Even if they don’t deliver half of what they say they do or they’re being a little ambivalent, that sure is a solid list of services that a modern marketing or fan managing company or service provider should be aiming to provide for musicians and other clients.

I’m not sure how these guys run their operation but with my work, I need to be paying one on one attention to my clients whenever possible because when you’re carrying out this work, so much is required to personalise and customize services to the specific act in order to make marketing communications and fan management authentic and successfil, as well as research involved to develop methods of qualifying and targeting high quality contacts and cultivating a growing group of connected and enabled fans.

And also it’s something for me to aim for because if I could do a decent job of all that I could definitely start charging more but as it is I’m still affordable!

I notice there’s a few things that they don’t mention that I do, such as SEO, PPC and ad supported revenue – I guess this is more hardened internet marketing stuff and they are, afterall, “fan managers”.

So maybe, given the needs of the large clients they serve who already have established fan bases that need maintenance, this suggests interacting with fans becomes a core revenue operation.

One you reach that “1000 true fans” point, then you bring on your “fan manager” who helps you facilitate an authentic relationship.

Especially if you’re paying in US$. How about this – the coupon code is “fan manager” if you mention that you want a “fan manager” I’ll take 10% off my service in US$. That’s $500 down to $450 – $150 US per month for comprehensive online music marketing management.fsdfsdfds

In a new model I see, musicans and entertainers require the assistance of a trinity of support parties to create revenue.

The first is the producer or the musicians musical mentor that aid the musician bringing their musical product to the most professional standard possible. This might also include someone who takes responsibility for ensuring the “talent’s” video content is also of a high standard.

The second is an agent. An agent takes a commission based on bookings and placements.
And the last is the fan manager.

Before I’ve said that the last was the online guru but I think just taking the attitude that some geek can fix your problems with technology isn’t going to be enough.

That’s why this term “fan manager” is so important. Rather than a band manager who used to organise your relationship with your label and with your agent if they didn’t already act as your agent, out of economic necessity your manager now must be proficient in organising and monetizing your relationship with thousands of fans to make it authentic and valuable for them so that the experience they get motivates them to make purchases – and of course the fan manager will facilitate such commercial operations online.

So last thing I want to say is how are you engaging fans and is their someone in your team dedicated to this?

Have you “got it” yet that the digital music revolution now is all about engaging fans?
They can have your music for free. But earn their respect as Lefsetz said, and they’ll pay for it anyway.

Gerd Leonhard compared them to puppies. Feed them free content and they’ll be loyal to you for life.

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Artist Forums and Music Membership Sites: Controlling the Tribe

October 2nd, 2009

I really need to practice writing shorter posts. It’s harder to keep people’s attention these days and often, you just want to hit them with the sharp end of an idea.

Right now, I’m posting about my membership site and artist community New Music Marketing it’s really getting over run by spammers and I don’t even have much foundation content there.

So the outcome is a forum needs a lot more maintenance than a blog.

But I really feel I need to get active there.

I don’t care about controlling the content. What I’m motivated by is creating a “tribal” environment. I don’t claim to be an expert, but there is clearly a methodology I’m developing and I’m happy to discuss this on my blog in kind of broad theoretical terms, but I’m desperate to ensure my actual clients are the first to benefit from my knowledge and I like the idea that inside the forum, discussing practical techniques as they apply to specific artists, as well as being completely open about what is available in terms of scripts, bots, automation, outsourcing, etc. – this is stuff I’m not keen to discuss on my by public blog, because I generally tend to charge for it, that’s my living!

The idea for the forum originally came from all the value I was putting into 1-on-1 email consultations and wanting other clients to benefit from what I was saying.

A lot of my clients, I have to accept, are not very advanced in web 2.0 and often this is precisely why they’ve come to me. They don’t read my blog and for a lot of them the pieces of the puzzle are only slowly coming together.

The forum can become an interactive environment which could provide controlled access to content and 3rd parties – outsourced staff such as graphic deigners, web designers – who could work directly with artists. So all I need to do is focus on bringing my clients together there.

I see this as being efficient without even thinking about the main point of such forums – you’re leveraging your user base for content and feedback. When you can control your tribe within such an environment which is perceived to be somewhat insular, we can talk freely about the issues and what blind spots might be coming up for artists in the process – I can respond directly to their actual needs, rather than waffling on my blog.

It’s just a bit of a mess in there right now! I had plans. But those plans have been on hold. These holidays hopefully I’m able to rally and move forward with this platform. It’s something new, I see benefits, I see scale, I just have to tackle the challenge of maintaining it to a point I can dedicate outsourced staff to it’s upkeep.

Or at least stop the spam!

Matt and his team from kurb does online music promotion, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management.

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Blog Promotion with Music. Marketing. Management. – Outsourcing Online Promotion

October 2nd, 2009

Matt and his team from kurb does online music promotion, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management.

Talk to Matt at: kurbpromo@gmail.com

Starting to do really nicely with the outsourcing stuff right now.

Right now I’ve just kicked of a blog promotion campaign for this blog which is going to create cumulative search authority and probably start bringing in a fair few curious readers.

There are just so many basic jobs required in online promotion and marketing that are really just scaling up basic repetitive tasks which can get boring for a creative REAL fast.

I first need to point out that a practical part of building online promotions is the “nesting” – getting settled in your spot with your website and your blog. You don’t want to really swing into full scale internet marketing if you haven’t made the necessary preparations.

Ultimately you want to have a .com domain for your website and your blog hanging off that site at www.yoursite.com/blog. This helps the work you do writing on your blog add to the search authority of your website which is the business end.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on a wordpress site or you’ve got a .info or a local site like .co.nz for new zealand, the work you put in building up blog post content can be shifted and preserved when you move your blog to a .com, but if you’ve put all this work into promoting the www.yourband.info and then you switch over to www.yourband.com . . .

Which is what I did when I moved from

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com

to

http://musicmarketingmanagement.com

You’re gonna waste all that effort.

The reality is staying within the wordpress network does get you more traffic short term, but I needed the freedom to develop my blog, and I lost out on a lot of the effort I put into promoting the kurb promotion blog on wordpress, and that blog still brings me more business than this one does. For now.

So this is why we won’t get into outsourcing promotion work on a website or a blog that hasn’t reached it’s final incarnation. Much like I don’t want to push to far into social media campaigns with bands when their design is unprofessional – that’s where I’m outsourcing designers – but today I’m talking more about outsourcing more mundane stuff that doesn’t require skills such as design work, but is just too boring for most to cope with, and it’s precisely for that reason that these techniques are so successful.

That other band you see yourself as being capable of being like in a years time?

Do you think they or their management spend hours upon hours building links? You think they’re paying someone else to do it – is their management really that smart? Probably not. So give yourself the edge and give me an email. I do online music marketing for bands kurbpromo@gmail.com

I’ve got this blog promotion campaign going now that’s costing me next to nothing. I paid them yesterday, they started work an 2 hours ago, look at them go!

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They’re doing 60 for me. 60 high quality backlinks from top blog directories where users are searching for blogs in their niche I’m definitely running this campaign for all clients who have their final blog set up configured.

If you’re a past client or contact of mine I’ll do a blog promotion deal for you for $US30 /$NZ50

Or of course, that’s included in a 3 month campaign starting at $US500, but I can cut kiwis a discount on that.

So once you have your blog and website set up where you intend it to stay for years to come, and you’ve had someone like me do some basic on page optimisation, and as an artist you’re committed to producing posts, then you can begin promoting your sites. By building links.

Links is the most important thing that Google uses to rank your sites for certain terms.
Masses of links is what you want. I’ve talked about how we build links:

- commenting blogs, particularly “do follow” blogs that pass on link juice. In the http://newmusicmarketing.com forum I provide several extansive lists of do follow blogs that pass on search authority. Hours if not days of work.

- submitting your site to search engines. Google is the big mama boss search engine that matters. But google also “crawls” all the 1000’s of other little baby search engines and though you’re probably already indexed by Google, being indexed by all these other search engines shows Google you have authority. with 5000+ search engines out there, even cutting and pasting to the top 200 would take again, hours and hours.

- syndicating articles. Using your blog posts and submitting them as free articles that webmasters may publish as long as they use your attributive link is one of themost powerful search based website promotion techniques available. Reposting stuff to wordpress, blogspot, myspace, facebook is one thing.

Also at this point we’re swapping over from promotional tactics that are search based to those that are social based – that is, submitting to article directories and also blog directories as I described in the campaign above, is great for improving search authority but at the same time, a high quality article or blog directory submission is going to add to the search benefits with actual readers who are going to come through the sites where you articles and blogs are being listed and syndicated.

Then you can go one further than I have at this point and submit your RSS feed to RSS directories, which is totally going to maximize the potential to syndicate your content and get links and traffic coming back through that.

So there are powerful and proven strategies to market your website and your blog content but they will bore the life out of you. I just cannot spend hours doing these repetitive submissions.

But outsourcing these jobs to companies who specialise in it, you can get a massive edge on other entertainment brands that just aren’t utilising strong leverage of the digital music environment.

Matt and his team from kurb does online music promotion, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management.

Talk to Matt at: kurbpromo@gmail.com

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Talking Rebranding and Tribe Building with Music. Marketing. Management

October 2nd, 2009

Matt Turner from kurb does online promotion for musicians, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management. Contact kurbpromo@gmail.com

Okay I’ve been thinking about this rebranding thing a lot.

Why are we talking about rebranding?

Because artists, creative people and entrepreneurs are coming into this online space using online tools, building websites, social networking, blogging, putting out free high value content, building email lists and developing new high value propositions.

They’re doing all the online marketing I’ve been doing for the last few years, because they see people like me and know that it is possible, they’re looking to join the dots to create digital music revenue, and so they’re throwing everything into making a new model work.

And then suddenly after years of building content, using solid online promotion methods, struggling and providing users and fans alike with value and leveraging online audiences and environments . . . what happens when the new model does work?

You reach the point that I have. That you’re doin’ alright. That you’ve made it work, you’ve made something of this mad digital music realm, and you’ve established yourself and you could continue to do well in your own little way.

And you might reach the same conclusion that I have. It’s great to have got somewhere struggling to do this and put it together, to forge a jagged new path . . . but what if we actually started doing this properly?

What if I started taking this stuff seriously? You might find yourself in same position I am that you say okay it’s great that we can earn a living and that people appreciate what we do, but now that we’ve put food on the table isn’t it time to start thinking about the bigger picture?

Rebranding isn’t a revenue strategy.

It’s probably going to cost to have better looking videos, a more professional website and blog design. To have a professional standard of art and video and offer functionality, features and usability that are fresh. To build strong stories with powerful writing and video making.

I’ve talked about the content crisis – “a survival of the fittest” in digital content, raising your standard and attempting to give your user base more is a long term strategy to connect authentically with an ever narrower niche who are particularly responsive to your message: Your Tribe.

You built your music to a this point based on a brand, based on a message in your content. Now it’s time to start refining that message into a powerful story, a story that will resonate and motivate members of your tribe.

A tribe is a group you belong to with which you share common values. You can connect, participate and/or lead. This is what rebranding is about. It’s not about being like Madonna and reinventing yourself, although it could be for some artists; It’s about a response to the these converging trends in digital culture.

When I’m talking about rebranding I’m not just talking about a makeover. I’m talking about showing leadership pertaining to the values shared amongst your target niche, that engage them and motivate them, that connect and bond them to you.

It’s not about change for the sake of it, it’s about refining and developing your brand, your message, in a modern way with the new technology you have available to do so.

Marketing and branding is a deeper part of the value an artist provides than ever before. Marketing stories are now narratives, artists are protagonists, our heroes, are characters playing out stories and messages that represent what ever more complex networks of fragmented fanbases value.

See the whole rebranding thing for me is about embracing social media and web 2.0 maturely and intelligently.

We’ve had myspace. We’ve had the photoshopping and the messed up custom profiles. We have youtube sitting there ubiquitous in the online video space, the mammoth in the room that won’t go away.

We learnt how to engage with users/fans/audience.

We learnt that people are looking for connection, for gratification, that have choices and they want to engage in a way that’s personally meaningful, they want to participate.

We now have the guru’s, the experts telling you how new marketing and branding should be done, information is free and it’s everywhere, it’s now time for artists and entrepreneurs alike to make sense of this environment, make sense of this information and make sense of the role their content plays.

That is rebranding, using the digital means now available to anyone who’s reading this to create a more powerful message.

I’m going to talk more about specifics in some future posts, but we’re obviously talking about video and youtube . . . websites, blogs – we’ve been talking about using this technology to build revenue for awhile now. Technology is only as good as the purpose it’s used for, so now we’re talking about this technology helping us to really articulate to our fans and audience . . . to lead your tribe, to be an “ideas leader” and bring fans and audiences and uses along with you.

Building a brand and articulating it is often about refining to make sure the message is getting through to your audience. Obviously I don’t know how much longer and can go on without breaking down some examples.

I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a musician, I’m a writer.

I want to be successful in business, I want to connect with people and be afforded approval and recognition, and I also want to achieve creative connectivity.

So in the next post hopefully I’ll getting stuck into how I want to re-articulate my brand so that the messages I want to connect with my audience are authentic and meaningful.

Matt Turner from kurb does online promotion for musicians, youtube video promotion and small business marketing. He blogs on music promotion at Music. Marketing. Management. Contact kurbpromo@gmail.com

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Website Marketing 2009: 7 Secrets to a SEO fail

September 30th, 2009

Need devastating online music marketing strategies and coaching? Email me, Matt @ Kurb. kurbpromo@gmail.com to find out how access to 4 valid credit cards could have me coaching you in online music marketing and revenue for all of 2009 – FREE. That’s worth US$2400.

Alright, kicking off the year at music, marketing and management, with some SEO website promotion material, and just covering some basics there.

Got some posts coming up for the New Years – more reflective thinking on online music marketing for 2009, and on twitter which gets it’s own post.

And of course a big power post coming up interpreting my top 10 online marketing strategies for artists and musicians in 2009.

But right now a bit of standard website marketing fare. You might recognise that I didn’t write this article.

I’m running a rapidly growing business and I don’t have time for leveraging my blog by committing as much content as possible!

But I do have a team. I have writers, I have SEO people, I have graphic designers available to me so that important but boring stuff gets done.

Graphic design isn’t THAT boring but seriously, projecting a professional standard of imagery is the only way to stand out from the amateurs who are wasting hours every night doing their own photoshop and probably not doing that great a job.

My vision for building a team wasn’t JUST making money. It was MOSTLY about making more money – this IS me we’re talking about – but also creating more leverage and just being able to do more and move quicker.

This is 2009, if you’re not leveraging what you have then you’re gonna find yourself dramatically outstripped by the flexibility and innovation of the competition who are using digital technology to the fullest.

2009 is the year that innovation goes beyond a neat idea and provides challenging value propositions that shake the old model.

With the access to the experience and resources that I have, I’m finding it a challenge to recognise how an artist with just great material can compete with an artist who has an organised digital team behind them and the strategies to leverage that team for value.

I’m going to talk about that some more soon.

Let’s read up on 7 Secrets to search engine marketing and website promotion fail:

Having a website is like owning a newspaper; you’re not running it for yourself, your running it so that people can see what you have to offer. In order to achieve this, there are tons of things that you’ll do to ensure that your site becomes popular. Search engines can help your sites popularity grow and if you use this to your advantage then people will come to your site. But sometimes you’re site is on the fifth page in a search and you wonder “why did that happen?” Well here are some of the mistakes you’ve been making

1. Running a highly animated or flash based website. Not everyone likes flash websites, they take a lot of time to load up completely and sometimes the animation isn’t worth the wait either because it’s not what their looking for or it just sucks. Also, it’s not everybody that has high speed internet connections. These are the people your highly animated sight will piss off greatly. A lot of web professionals try to avoid flash pages and even Google prefers to put the text based websites before the flash websites. Check it, its true.

2. If you don’t pay attention to the data on the web. Some phrases are very popular searches on the web. If you pay attention to the web you’d notice that some keywords are particularly popular among lot of web researchers. When you pay attention to this you can use this to your advantage. Adding these keywords to articles in your webpage will help improve traffic to your site.

3. Hoard links. Remember what mother told you, “a good turn deserves another” if you don’t provide links to other websites on your site, they’ll definitely not be sending anybody to you and your site won’t grow. Provide links to other sites who have information similar to yours and they’ll return the favor and with interest too as your website’s ranking will go up in on the search pages.

4. Don’t strategize. If you don’t keep developing strategies to stay on top, one day someone will come up and down you’ll go. You must continue to research the most popular keywords and add them to the posts on your site.

5. Don’t blog. Blogging is a way of inviting people to have lunch at your site. If you don’t have this, those that have will move ahead of you as people would rather go to a place that’s more inviting than one that’s just plain and old fashioned and is not frequently updated.

6. Provide links to spam sites or virus infected sites. If your site provides links to spam sites, you’re in big trouble. People are afraid of getting viruses on the web as it is, a site that links to spam sites or virus infected sites is not at all the best way to invite people. Plus Google will not encourage people to come to you’re site. Your site will come last among searches.

7. Change pages without providing redirects. This is bad. How do I find what moved out yesterday. Make sure your links are updated as you update your site.

If you’re making these mistakes then you better get your house in order… And Fast!

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Online Music Marketing Fitness Check For Music Acts and Business

September 30th, 2009

You guys have got every reason to be excited here at the Music Marketing Management blog because I just released a new post on my small business marketing blog on the top 10 most successful internet marketing strategies for 2009, and I’m going to going redux on it when I re-analyze this post for the online music marketing tip.

That’ll be coming up.

But there’s a few points to consider however.

Musicians have other opportunities that small businesses don’t to create a positive brand that resonates and motivates your “tribe”, which in a global, digital environment can be skillfully managed to create income.

I’ve still got a post coming up about that also, more meaty strategies to leverage an audience for music revenue.

But you must have a strong email list to do this, for a start. Which means a compelling strategy or proposition to get those emails.

But the one thing small businesses do have down where musicians are falling short online is that the average small business website may be just as crusty and purposeless as yours but at least they’re experienced in producing and fulfilling sales.

What have you got that’s so special I’ll want to fork out for it? Oh those plastic things, those CD’s. Do I really want more plastic stuff cluttering up my house?

No, I don’t, I want the experience! I want something to happen to me that’s awesome, not some bit of plastic I end up standing on and scratching beyond use.

Remember that tune “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus?

Listen to that guy raving in the comments on hypebot.com!

“There is no physical future for NEW & YOUNG artists. But that’s not something you can expect old people who run old labels that sell old music to embrace. We already know this: they think youth and youth culture are only good for cooking and eating.

Vinyl will survive in pockets, but if you are a new artist and you have a young audience then physical is a waste of money and time.

I’m not talking about Disney acts. I’m talking about real music for people who have begun to think, work and spend their own money.”

That guy nailed it. We’re living in changing times people. Again on my small business blog I held up my top 10 list of 2009 marketing strategies and compared against different business models. Advertising, Search, and Social media are going to work differently for different acts and the demographic of their niche audience.

Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.

Music acts have naturally powerful brands. Small businesses are organisations that have commodified a product or service successfully.

A business needs to develop it’s brand to engender loyalty, a band needs to understand how to turn brand/fan loyalty into revenue.

So when I get an email asking about my music marketing services this is what I’ll think straight away.

This is the stuff I want to know about before I even think about myspace promo, youtube promo, social media SEO, PPC, online campaigns, etc.

1: bringing presentation to a professional standard

If your website looks crappy then you’re obviously trying to build some kind of sympathy/authenticity vibe. That works. Look at me, I’ve had crappy presentation. But watch what happens in the next month or 2 when my presentation and brand value comes up to standard. Put it this way, you can get a start, but you’re not going to be giving up your day job unless your website is AWESOME.

2: compelling proposition (free mp3 etc.)

I’m doing well because my propositions are competitive. You can get value from reading my blog for free, and I reckon you should read my blog for at least a month or two before you think about emailing me for online music marketing service. About 200 new people come to this blog every week, and at least one of them always wants to spend money. And if they do spend US$500 to start a 3 month digital coaching and music marketing campaign with me, that’s a lot cheaper than the $US2000-3000 you’d spend on a credible US based company.

PS BY FEBRUARY PRICES WILL BE US$600 FOR 3 MONTHS. I’M ALREADY PRACTICALLY FULL UP FOR JANUARY, I’M JUST GETTING READY TO START HIRING AGAIN IF DEMAND KEEPS UP.

3: outcome focus (selling things is not always the easiest path immediately, I tend to encourage email list building initially)

We’ve already talked about why list building is so important. I’m likely to be blogging all year about those little extra income streams that are available, because I know you’re going to be a lot happier just with an extra $100 per week.

No maybe you don’t want frickin dating site ads and bloody “free ipod” nonsense on your site or going out to your email list. But it’s lucky I’m smarter than I look because it’s something we can play with.

Look, I’m just gonna go start getting a bit of money there, then I’ll come back and we can talk about how you can make some money without looking like a dick in front of your fans who are your priority.

4: online marketing

We can do my space promotion, we can do youtube promotion, we can hit the social media hot spots, we can do big roll outs over blogs, forums, classified sites, we can do SEO, PPC, we can reach out to influencers, we can leverage our own content with distribution strategies, blogs, p2p.

Marketing. It’s what we do.

We can do it all. But seriously what’s the point if you’re not able to convert that attention into profit at some stage?

5: leveraging content (blogs, video etc.)

Are you even writing your damn blog? I’m in a state of self flagellation over my lack of progress in video.

I MUST drop new youtube videos in the next month if I want to retain even a scrap of respect in the online music marketing scene.

Except I’ve got that gen X thing going on where I’m oh so precious about my brand and want to wait until my skin is clear and my hair looks right. Sheesh. The 00’s are almost over and I’m still reaching for the airbrush???

Do. Your. Content.

Keywords and Memes. Do it. Do it. Do it.

So there’s a quick checklist there I run when starting up with a new client.

What’s the moral of today’s story?

You may think you’re ready for marketing.

Because you think marketing is about lots of people knowing about you.

Well it’s not! It’s about making money. So you can continue to pursue what you love and build on it.

But you’re not ready to start making money from music online, you only think you’re prepared. We’ve got to get you prepared, and that could take 3 months on it’s own!

And I’m really glad I have great designers, promoters and writers here at kurb to help artists get to a place where they are actually successful, because just having great songs, or a pretty website, or something free to give away doesn’t mean much until you work out how it’s going to pay.

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Thoughts on Music Membership / Subscriptions Inspired by 37 Signals

September 30th, 2009

Kurb promotion provides online marketing and management packages for musicians.

Email me, Matt for more info – kurbpromo@gmail.com

Yup, bouncing off 37 signals again even though they are a software company.

I think it’s a great endorsement of the kind of convergence we’re experiencing through digital concepts, and this idea I talk about abandoning the attempt to install traditional retail business models online – IE selling CD’s and T-shirts or single downloads or copies of anything from a web store – that we can draw so much valuable inspiration from another industry.

You know I’m a great fan of recurring business models for musicians such as membership sites or subscriptions.

Mainly this comes back to the high/low proposition stuff I’ve been talking about. I always encourage artists to fevelop high value propositions but at the end of the day this is where the comparisons I continually make about your business in the music industry and my business in the music marketing industry cease to add value due to the practical nature of the service and products we deliver.

While I may have 20 “fans” or in this case, my audience, my clients who will pay me $500 for a month of my services or a one off job . . .

You as an artist need 2000 fans who will pay you $5 for a month of services or access to a one off product or service.

This kind of financial propositioning

And to be honest, from my experience in business, dynamic propositions that can be leveraged will win the day. Nothing works better than a great product at a great price with a real frictionless experience . . . that is you just make it so easy for someone to get their hands on the goods.

Thinking about new ways where you can give as much as possible to your fanbase in return for as much as you are able to get back is a powerful strategy. Some ideas will fly, some won’t.

Remember my idea for the Plasticast? A free giveaway cd of unsigned artists sponsored by local business?

It was just one of a million new ways you can leverage value. All you have to do is think about it.

In this article, 37 Signals talks about the benefits of a model where you collect a little bit of money each month from a large pool of highly engaged users.

Just think about how it would apply to your music/website as a fully accessible body of content that you are committed to maintaining.

And remember that this is still fresh, new perspectives of value.

At 37signals we sell our web-based products using the monthly subscription model. We also give people a 30-day free trial up front before we bill them for their first month.

We think this model works best all the time, but we believe it works especially well in tough times. When times get tough people obviousy look to spend less, but understanding how they spend less has a lot to do with which business models work better than others.

There are lots of business models for software. Here are a few of the most popular:

Freeware
Freeware, ad supported
One-off pay up front, get upgrades free
One-off pay up front, pay for upgrades
Subscription (recurring annual)
Subscription (recurring monthly)

Cutting new before cutting old

Typically people look to cut new spending before they cut current spending. They’ll often put a freeze on anything they aren’t already paying for. Eliminating new costs is easier than eliminating existing costs.

For example, if they’ve been evaluating something new, they’ll put that evaluation on hold. If they’ve been able to get by without it they can likely continue to get by without it. Or if there’s a big upgrading coming up they’ll stall or just consider it unnecessary.

But if they’re already paying for a service they use, they’ll likely continue using that service. They may downgrade to a cheaper plan, or try to negotiate price, but if it’s still useful there’s a fair chance they’ll continue using it.

The problem with one-off selling

The problem with one-off selling is that once the customer pays you once, that revenue stream runs dry. In tough times, when people freeze new spending, less new customers means less new revenue. And in extreme cases, you may see no new customers at all. That means no new revenue at all. So if you have no new customers for three months, you have no new revenue for three months. If you don’t have reserves, going dry for three months could sink you.

The semi-benefit of annual subcriptions

Annual subscriptions are better because you still have the potential to generate revenue on a regular basis without picking up new customers. However, since annual renewals are initially more expensive than month-to-month renewals, companies may think twice about re-upping. If they do re-up, they’ll likely negotiate harder and threaten to leave all together if their price isn’t met. They may be bluffing, but in tough times it’s especially hard to risk losing a customer.

The benefit of monthly subscriptions

Since new spending is often cut before current spending, you may not see any new customers for a while, but with a monthly subscription business model you’ll still be earning regular monthly income from your existing customers.

If you have 5000 paying customers at $10/month, you’re sill seeing $50,000/month in revenue even though no new customers are signing up. And while some existing customers may start to cancel to save on their current costs, you will still have money coming in every month. Cash flows from monthly subscriptions are among the most predictable flows you can find.

The other benefit of monthly subscriptions is that the entry cost is lower for new customers. An annual subscription may ultimately be cheaper than a monthly subscription, but the initial outlay on an annual subscription will scare a lot of folks away in a tough economy. People are looking to save money, and annuals can do that, but they’re thinking short term not long term. Short term savers reign in tough times which is why monthly subscriptions are safer for all involved.

How about a combo?

Some companies offer a combination of plans. Monthly, annual, or big up front “lifetime” subscriptions. As long as monthly is an option I think they’ll be alright. At 37signals we don’t have an advertised annual option, but you can make a lump sum deposit into your account once you’re signed up. This way you can put in $500 and not have to worry about seeing a credit card charge on your bill every month. Some people like this because they can spend whatever remains in their annual budget this year and get to use the product “for free” next year.

Just a reminder

The ideas above aren’t rocket surgery, but they are a reminder that the type of model you offer can have a significant effect on your company’s viability when the bad times roll.

Kurb Bonus: Matt’s pricing structure for an artist’s membership community with full access to content

lifetime 09 pricing: $199 2010 pricing: $199

1 year 09 pricing: $99 2010 pricing:$75

6 months 09 pricing: $75 2010 pricing: $60

3 months 09 pricing: $60 2010 pricing:$40

1 month 09 pricing: $40 2010 pricing:$2

1 week 09 pricing: $25 2010 pricing: $10

1 day 09 pricing: $10 2010 pricing: $5

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Dirty Secrets of New Music Industry Promotion from Hypebot

September 30th, 2009

This from Hypebot, with my analysis in italics.

Sorry to tell you this, but…

BIG CHECK BOOKS STILL TRUMP BIG IDEAS – Just ask any music start-up. You’d think that the major labels would embrace every great idea they could find to help save their struggling businesses. Nope. Labels are inundated with so many “great ideas” and are so desperate to help their bottom lines, that the only ideas they take seriously are attached to fat checkbooks. Don’t forget this is a business, and business I’ve learnt is all about staying alive in it. There’s gotta be a pay out coming, you can’t sail a sinking ship forever, and guys who stay alive in music learn to be hard bitten business people. We don’t back young kids with big dreams because it feels so right like in a movie, we use our business knowledge and experience to leverage talent. So get smart about it and don’t expect anyone to come to your party unless what you’re doing just totally blows people away and you’re taking big risks to back yourself and make big plays. What I do doesn’t blow people away but do you think I sit around here waiting for a leg up? Do I whinge waiting for my funding? No, I get out there and drop content attached with propositions which fly and get traction.And one day you’ll be like me wondering why the losers don’t just quit complaining and start getting on with it.
EVERY TIME MUSIC IS LICENSED TO AN AD SUPPORTED MUSIC 2.0 SERVICE THEY’RE PROBABLY BREAKING A CONTRACT – How many record label or publishing contracts do you know that say “Its OK to pay me a tiny fraction of projected ad revenue every time my song is played / downloaded.”

Again this comes down to high vs. low value propositions. Cents add up. But very very slowly. This is ancillary revenue, if you’re depending on these kinds of trickles, you’re not going to last long whether they’re legitimate or not. Build High Value propositions.

Whats these high value propositions that I keep going on about? Here’s an example the “NIN ghosts” deluxe collectors edition for $300, only 2500 copies ever made. Sold out in 2 days.

= $750,000

Swweweet!

on this blog, I don’t care if you have credibility like NIN or Radiohead or you don’t like Tila Tequila and The Crazy Frog. I am interested in succeeding with new models for doing profitable music business, exchanging rewarding musical experiences that people perceive as valuable for financial returns.

3.YOU CAN’T DO IT YOURSELF – There are not enough hours in the day to return emails from all of you Facebook friends, update your dates on Eventful, post new photos on Flickr, edit the expletives out of that backstage video before posting it on YouTube and still find the time to write songs, record them and then play them live. It takes a village to raise a child. It take a team to build a career. Start building one today.

Of course you need professional support. Let’s start with these 3 people

- A music producer who helps your music to sound as complete as possible.

- A music agent who creates opportunities for you to earn money providing music services such as performances and licensing

- A music marketing manager such as me who is not only experienced in music business but has a proven track record of online earnings based on internet marketing knowledge.

The real issue here is identifying when you’re ready to begin serious music promotion and marketing. Your music career is now indistinguishable form a small business, so what you’re actually attempting to do is become profiitable as quickly as possible in orderto leverage what existing revenue streams you can create. So get started, read my blog for real value and online monetization strategies, build up your repertoire of content, build your content mass so it develops gravity, make some mistakes, then start getting business minded about the tasks you need to outsource.

Our service for US$500 for 3 months is designed to be comprehensive and affordable but I don’t wave a magic wand and make people viable music industry stars. That takes work. And so far I have met very few musicians who are grasping the future. That’s not to say that they aren’t successful or that they need me, but they could just as easily start outsourcing and earning more online, as to focus more on their core activity – writing and perfroming music.

So many music industry bloggers are wrapped up in the old ways. I don’t have to blog. You don’t have to play gigs or put out an album, sure it’s a great start, but if you’re doing something else that’s already working keep doing it! I write this blog because it helps me sort out my ideas for making money online in music so if you’re not, then keep reading.

Only do stuff that’s not profitable if you truly enjoy it and think it’s contributing to your growth as an artist.

4. EVEN AFTER THE FCC BANNED PAYOLA, INDIES STILL HAVE NO CHANCE AT RADIO.

Little has changed. Indie music still has almost no chance of making it onto commercial radio. Radio programmers are too often sheep playing fewer and fewer new records. And the vast majority still come from their pals at the majors.

Again, radio is tied to old ideas about how the music industry works. TV amd Radio don’t allow artists the domination that they once experienced so even if you are that 1 in a million that makes it through, it’s less rewarding than ever.

TV and Radio are platforms that are full of contrivance when you need to be looking to connect directly with fans because that’s the solidest long term strategy. TV and Radio should be regarded in the same way as myspace, you’re going to use that platform any which way you can to create real connections with fans, because myspace traction and radio and TV traction results in fans, but only successful engagement and management of fan relationships is going to give you a solid career. So leverage traditional media such as TV and Radio and whatever magazines that will still be around, but don’t frame it in the centre of your model.

Fans and income streams should be the centre of your model.

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