Turn a virus into reverberation to get lasting fans

There have been a couple New York Times articles recently that have stood out to me. The first was Jon Pareles's piece on "Songs From the Heart of a Marketing Plan," discussing the licensing business's rise in recent years (thanks to DA of Chester French for the tip). The second was Gregory Schmidt's article on Broadway's use of MySpace and other viral techniques to fill theater seats. Both articles are about new ways for the arts to generate awareness.

The final quote of the Schmidt article touches on a point that I've been adamant about: “In the theater, there is only one proven marketing technique that works: to generate word of mouth,” Mr. McCollum said. “Everything else is a shot in the dark.”

Viral Marketing techniques are little more than the next generation billboard or TV ad -- they generate a bit of brand awareness if executed properly, but don't have any real lasting effects. You may see a spike in traffic as a result of a Viral Marketing campaign, but it rarely has any meaningful long-term revenue impact. Same goes for music licensing -- having your song licensed for a commercial is often good exposure, downloads of the single on iTunes will spike, as will MySpace plays, but how many new fans has it given you?

I actually admire the band Chairlift for deliberately not calling attention to the fact that their song "Bruises" was featured in the latest iPod Nano commercial ("I tried to do handstands for you..."). They knew that by making a big deal about one song being featured on TV, they'd alienate their true fans and make a big statement about their intentions as artists (to make money and get famous quickly instead of caring about their art and the fans who have supported them from the start).

As Seth Godin has posited for many years now, the best products, those that sell and that people love, are the ones with the marketing built in. Andy Sernovitz says "Advertising is the cost of being boring," and he's absolutely right. Viral Marketing is little more than a new generation of advertising -- its purpose is to generate brand awareness rather than create long-term fans and customers.

Reverberation Marketing, on the other hand, happens when a product (be it an album or a bottle of soap) is worth talking about and is properly exposed to its target audience. The first part, that it's worth talking about, must be baked into the product. The second piece, exposure to the target audience, is the job of a marketer.

Fleet Foxes have topped a vast number of Album of the Year lists (including my own), but that has nothing to do with the fact that their CD was available at Starbucks. In fact, the Starbucks deal came after they were playing sold out shows to thousands of die-hard fans around the world. They built a remarkable product, and exposed it talkers and tastemakers in their target audience (Pitchfork.com, for example). They continued to build with a tour opening for Wilco, a band with a similar target audience, and are now selling out headlining shows in Australia.

Perhaps most importantly, the fans they've made will stick with them. Viral Marketing encourages flash-in-the-pan artists or brands, whereas Reverberation Marketing builds a lasting fan-base that can be marketed to for years to come.

Fleet Foxes have focused on their fans, rather than general exposure, as they recognize the true fans will allow them to do what they love for the rest of their lives. I talked to them briefly after a sold-out show at The El Ray in October and they said they would be thrilled to play to that crowd at that venue for the rest of their lives if that's where their fans were. They even mock the marketing ploys of dollar-driven artists in a recent blog post:

"We have found the perfect place to record our next record, we've rented a barn/house in Port Townsend a few miles from where my dad used to build boats, and we're gonna build a big ole Titanic that will seem indestructible but will actually sink quite easily due to something minor that we overlooked (something like hella world beat / glitch pop influences or a continuous literal narrative). SO watch out for FORD AUTOMOTIVE PRESENTS FLEET FOXES II: TIDES OF THE UNDERDEMON, SERMON 3:16 exclusively at Best Buy, January 17th 2009!"

So what can they do next? Make the ties to their existing fans stronger. Get more direct contact routes than MySpace (email addresses, cell phone numbers, etc) in order to increase quality of communication (read: segmentation by location or depth of connection (single purchase vs large purchase and sharing)) and strengthen the connection. Understand what those fans want from them, understand who else those fans are listening to, reward the fans who help spread their message, and most of all continue to be themselves.

The true fans have come because they feel an untainted connection to the band. They will support the band for years to come. The folks who buy your single off iTunes because they heard your song on a commercial are virtually meaningless in comparison. Thinking financially of the lifetime value (LTV) of each:

• True fan: Buys 3 albums (3 x $10), 1 vinyl ($15), tickets to 5 shows (5 x $20), and 2 t-shirts (2 x $15). Also, they inspire 3 other fans, who might spend half that on average. Total LTV = $437.50
• Single purchaser: Buys one single on iTunes ($.99), likes it enough to buy the whole album (rarely happens -- perhaps 1 in 20 at best). Total LTV = $9.99

Obviously nearly every artist is going to have some of each. Exposure is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it might help create more true fans. However, your time is much better spent targeting the true fans than worrying about a sheer number of ears you can get your music in. True fans enable reverberation for years to come.

For more on how targeting true fans can benefit the bottom line more than mass exposure (and some great examples), I highly recommend Ian Rogers's recent keynote speech from the GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit.

First Aid Kit: A story of discovery

Many folks ask me how I discover music. I wish I had an easy answer. I download a lot of stuff (both albums and playlists, which sometimes inform album purchases) via torrent or other filesharing options, I also read the occasional blog, and hear about a lot of good music from coworkers and friends. I don't use Pandora, I scrobble to Last.fm but never look at it, and I keep the iTunes Genius sidebar open but I'm not sure why (it's not like I look at iTunes when I listen to music--I click once and it plays).
I can speak in broad generalizations all day, but I thought it best to take you through how I found out about a couple teenage sisters from Sweden in a band called First Aid Kit. Every time I play them for someone the immediate response is "Who is this??" (in a good way). But I can't take credit for finding them.
I first found out about First Aid Kit from Peter Rauh via a Twitter message: "Some inspiration for the day: Two Swedish teenagers covering Fleet Foxes in the woods (no lie) http://tinyurl.com/5svkol" The link takes you to this video:


After I told Peter how much I loved the video, he told me he heard about it via Light In The Attic.
I downloaded the mp3 of the song for free, and checked out their MySpace profile. From there, I bought their record from Klicktrack.
After more than a few listens in a short time span, I knew others would enjoy the music, so I published an OpenTape player on my website:

I told a number of friends about the music, and my friend Britti even thought she played them on her radio show. Unfortunately, she had come across another band by the same name, this one from Spain -- goes to show you the importance of picking an original name for a band.
At any rate, I hope you all enjoy First Aid Kit as much as I do. I think they're mature beyond their years, and anyone who fashions themselves after the Fleet Foxes is A-OK in my book.

Collective Patronage: Your next advance is from your fans

Collective Patronage is not a new concept (heck, a quick Google search turned up this article from 2001 -- the author says "I can think of four local San Francisco-area bands, and one each in Minneapolis and New York, to whom I would happily give $25/year to support their music"), but only now is it beginning to be properly realized in the music industry. The idea is a return to the days of classical music, when composers were paid by their wealthy patrons to compose music that everyone could enjoy.
In a perfect world, someone richer than you would pay for your favorite bands to make lots of great music for you to enjoy for free. However, we live in a democracy with a free(ish) market, so we all have to do our part.
Artists are no longer confined by a physical medium (CD, cassette, vinyl, etc) as their flagship product, and fans have many options to avoid paying for music. Yet many, if not most, of us still pay for music that we like. In talking to others who work in the industry, the standard routine seems to be to download a number of albums without paying, take them for a few spins, and pay for the ones you like.
Had I said that 5 years ago, I would've had the RIAA all over me. As it stands, however, much of the fear of file sharing has subsided -- heck, there are even "marketing" companies who will seed your album on torrent sites.
While many of the barriers to entry for artists to produce and distribute music have diminished, they have not disappeared. Artists still need to cover recording costs, equipment costs, gas costs, etc. Claiming "oh, they can make that money on the road" only applies to a select few bands (and that number is diminished with high gas prices and harsh economic conditions).
Artists need fans, and they need some of those fans to pay some money. Yes, those "some"s are intentional. Fans can pay in many ways (eg - pay attention, pay permission to market to them, etc), but some of the fans do need to contribute money for the band's survival.
Some services have sprung up with the concept of Collective Patronage in mind -- SellABand.com, SliceThePie.com, etc -- but those are focused exclusively on unsigned, relatively unknown artists, and instead of fostering a true relationship between artists and fans, they are more of a game for the fans and a one-time "make or break" for the artists. In other words, they're not focused on long-term, sustainable growth. They also fall short in extending the concept of Collective Patronage to larger, more established artists.
"Oh, but the big artists have labels to cut them big checks!" Sure, sort of. But even large artists could do better for themselves taking checks directly from their fans rather than from labels. Think about it: with how much they're struggling, and with all their bureaucracy, would major labels make a major investment were they not almost positive they could recoup? Not likely.
Take the David Byrne - Brian Eno release Everything That Happens Will Happen Today -- by contract I can't speak to specific numbers, but the goal was to recoup recording costs and make as much as they would have made from a major label advance. Perhaps that was a bit audacious, considering the amount of marketing money a major label would have dropped, but guess what? The album hit that goal in well under the three months it's been out -- long before it even hit traditional retail outlets or iTunes/Amazon. Not only that, but both artists draw from a slightly older fanbase that isn't as likely to dig for music online.
Even ETH was a fairly traditional release -- digital only, digital plus CD, and digital plus limited edition tin with bonus disc. To move to a system truly based on Collective Patronage, a group of fans would all pay an agreed-upon sum to an artist each year to ensure that artist continues to produce music. In exchange, they receive access to all the artist's output for that year, plus maybe a few extra bonuses. Essentially, it's a subscription or membership to the artist.
Josh Rouse posts an album of some sort each month for his patrons (okay, subscribers) to download. Jubilee recorded an EP, gathered patrons based on that EP, and put the money they collected towards further recording (which, of course, the patrons receive for free).
I've probably belabored the point more than I need to, but I encourage fans to become patrons of their favorite artists, and artists to seek out patrons -- we all want to make each other a little bit happier and bring a little more beauty to the world through music. Some have the talent and inspiration, others have the money.

Why Trent Reznor Rules

I hope this shows up decently. If not please view it at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/2877586803/sizes/o/

Synchronous audio over video chat

If someone knows how to do this, please let me know...
I want to be able to play music synchronously over video chat. Meaning, I imagine, writing a simple streaming audio player on a video chat API that could either play songs from skreemr and seeqpod or from your computer (temporarily hosting them or pushing them to another hosting service) so that people on both ends can listen to the same music at the same time without the time lapses and audio overlaps that exist in playing music on one end through the computer microphone. Help?

Artist Idea #3: TXT for Video

This is the third in a series of relatively short posts of potentially crazy, potentially profitable ideas for musicians to use. If you use them, you don't have to give me any credit, but please do write in and tell me how it worked for you.

Here's an idea that is best enabled with Topspin, but is worth running by any means necessary. Get a phone for the band (or, alternately, get an SMS receiving number/account online), post the number at concerts (tape it on your amps for full effect), and have fans text you their e-mail addresses. At the end of the night, or in the van the next day, compile all the e-mail addresses (and their phone numbers) you received. Put them into a list titled the city or venue you just played so you can keep track of where they are for future communications.
Finally, give them a reward! My recommendation is a private link to a video of the previous night's performance, but I know not everyone travels with video cameras (you should! get the merch guy or someone in one of the other bands to tape you). Alternately, a personalized message would be nice, an exclusive song download would be better, and encouragement to tell their friends if they had a good time is always good policy.

Artist Idea #2: Dedications

This is the second in a series of relatively short posts of potentially crazy, potentially profitable ideas for musicians to use. If you use them, you don't have to give me any credit, but please do write in and tell me how it worked for you.
I don't know what it is about chatting it up with my friend Adam, but I always wind up with new artist ideas while talking with him. The next three are all from one conversation about ideas for Mondo Pr!mo's new release, 2FN HOT, and upcoming tour with The Pink Spiders.
Start by emailing all your fans and let each of them pick a song to have dedicated to them on your next tour stop nearest to them.
If you scale like crazy, it would be tougher to keep up with the dedications (perhaps start selecting fans at random, or fans with the best reasons for why they deserve the dedication), but while you're still building, the satisfaction and excitement of a personal dedication is a huge reward for your initial core fans.
Sure you might make a dedication anyway if someone asked you outside the venue before the show, but by offering the opportunity in advance, the fans will get more excited to go to the show and more excited about bringing friends to hear that song dedicated to them.
THEN you follow up with them, having brought a video camera on tour with you, by posting that song, with dedication, on youtube and email them the link.
Then they share that to all their friends who didn't go to the show, those folks hear your songs, get hooked, and, from the details of the youtube vid, know where to go to buy your stuff.