Jerry's Blog
The single, most important selling tool is your web site. Crafting your web site should be priority one in today’s economy. You are a musician. You make your living with music. Doesn’t it make common sense for you to find someone that understands the music world and the Internet?
Unfortunately, web sites are the most overlooked tool independent musician possess. Your web site represents you and your music, yet it is not the answer to all your problems. The amount of information on the Internet is beyond imagination. Your web site will add to that information. Your job is to make sure you are found. Once found it’s also your job to entice your possible super fan to stay for a while. Long enough to get to know you and hopefully fall in love with you.
You want your web site to be attractive and purposeful. Your purpose is to sell your music. You want them to revisit often to sell them more music. Sounds simple enough. Right?
The majority of web sites:
• load slowly
• have a navigation system almost impossible to figure out
• have yellow text on black background or some other awful color scheme
• have links taking your fan to another site
• welcome you with terrible background music
• ask for your e-mail address before they let you in
And the list goes on.
It doesn’t matter if you play country, rockabilly, heavy metal, French folk tunes, or anything else. Your web site has to be carefully organized, structured, and presented. In future posts I will help steer you in the right direction to accomplish this task. That’s why you are reading this. Right?
Jerry's Blog
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PRS Guitars Offers New ‘Stripped’ 58 Model
The “Stripped” 58 is a no-frills American-made guitar for short-scale, singlecut players. Made by PRS Guitars in Stevensville, Maryland, this vintage-inspired instrument delivers straight-forward tone in a no-nonsense package. |
Are we officially entering analytical overload? Data analytics firm Musicmetric is now tracking fan responses on an hourly basis, and even recommending the best time of day to market to an audience. “Even something as simple as sending out a promotion during the peak time of day for network fan activity of your artist can give a measurable impact on conversion,” said Musicmetric CEO Gregory Mead.
* 7digital is beefing its stateside presence considerably with several new hires. Jon DeMond-Axelrod (formerly eMusic) and Matt Jwayad (Apple, Pandora, Sprint) are jumping in as Business Development Directors, with Kyle Pierce (formerly IODA) assuming a Project and Account Manager role. Anna Siegel will drive marketing initiatives, while Lisa Tiver (formerly Rightsflow) will consult on publishing matters.
* This could be a tough summer for the majors (and recordings in general), if the latest Soundscan sales are any indication. In its second week, John Mayer’s Born and Raised dropped 70 percent to roughly 65,000 units, another big-name artist with a bigtime second-week slip. And that was the top-charting album for the week; Adele’s 21 posting nearly 58,000 units.
* Barack Obama and Mitt Romney opened the CMT Music Awards with a comedic skit, a nice kick for everyone involved. “The President and Governor Romney each understand the reach of the CMT audience, particularly on our highest-rated night of the year,” said Brian Philips, president of CMT.
* Also in Nashville, the Production Music Association (PMA) is hosting a symposium on Thursday related to current music valuations. Joel Goodman (Cue Music, MusicBox), Ron Mendelsohn (Megatrax), Mark Montgomery (FLO {thinkery}), Marshall Seese, Jr. (Mowgli Games), and Shawn White (Scripps Networks Interactive) are among the executives chewing over this complicated topic. The action is happening at the BMI offices; more at http://goo.gl/7T4zt
* So how much cash is Gobbler playing with, anyway? A company executive recently pointed Digital Music News to $3.05 million in total funding since January 2011, with a $1.75 million venture round finalized earlier this year.
* James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond – the drug kingpin that once used Interscope’s Santa Monica offices to traffic cocaine – has now been found guilty on 13 charges related to narcotics trafficking. Rosemond formerly managed Akon, Game, Brandy, Sheek Louch, and Mike Tyson, among others. Rosemond faces life in prison.
* Elvis Presley is about to receive a full holographic revival, probably the first of several. Digital Domain Media Group – the group behind the Tupac hologram at Coachella – has just finalized a deal with Core Media Group to spark a range of holo-fantastic ideas for the King.
Yes, there are 35 different Latin American countries. And Deezer has just gone live in every single one of them. That’s all part of a worldwide launch strategy that avoids the US entirely.
* That was fast. After signing in April, Azelia Banks has now split with Gaga manager Troy Carter. Which means Carter’s quest for a smashing number two starts anew…
* Thank you, RIAA? The Pirate Bay is now thanking the trade group for asking Google to ban the BitTorrent tracker from its results. “Users will go directly to us instead and use our search instead. We’ll grow even more massive,” the site thumbs. “It’s really hard to compete with Google, but if they can’t index media search engines like us, we’ll be the dominant player in the end.”
* Another day, another stunning mobile stat or prediction. A study by Ericsson asserts that mobile data volumes will multiply by a factor of 15 over by 2017, thanks partly to technological leapfrogging in many countries.
* Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Welch has just passed away, the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Welch was 66.
* After all that? The Recording Academy has now restored the Latin Jazz Album category to the Grammys, a move that follows endless protests and a lawsuit on the matter. Perhaps Linda Chorney should give this interesting new genre a try; the Grammys air February 10th.
* Greece says yes. But the European Union is now getting ready to file its ‘statement of objections’ to the proposed marriage between Universal Music Group and EMI.
* Facebook is now delivering a centralized App Center.
* If you’re a Last.fm user, change your password! The CBS-owned site was part of a very substantial series of hacks that compromised usernames and passwords for sites that included LinkedIn.
* This is a slightly different direction for the company, but Bandcamp is now opening a discovery component called ‘Discoverinator.’ After all, they do have hundreds of thousands of albums…
NAB: Royalty Rates Have ‘Suffocated the Expansion of Internet Radio…’
Digital Music News – NAB: Royalty Rates Have ‘Suffocated the Expansion of Internet Radio…’
Jerry's Blog
Back in the day music folks like Clive Davis and Ahmet Ertegün ran major record labels. They were music fans and loved music. They were not accountants. To me these were the golden days of music industry.
Well, times have changed. These days, beverage companies own major record labels. The industry is not so much about music any more. It’s about cloning. Major labels want you to believe that if you don’t sound exactly like the guy on Billboard Hot 100, you don’t have the slightest chance.
Yet with all their resources, they didn’t see the Internet affecting them until it did. This is the point where the playing field got level. They were in control on the street. They controlled distribution and publicity. They controlled what customers got to choose from in record stores.
In my opinion, the Internet is God’s gift to independent musicians. There are millions of people on the Internet looking for new music and ready to buy your music if they like it. While promoting music on the Internet may have been in the caboose ten years ago, it’s now driving the train. The best thing about the Internet is that you’re able to sell your music regardless of geography. You don’t have to live in New York in order to sell your music on 5th Avenue.
While these things are true. Fact is over ninety percent of music web sites fail to achieve the goal of selling music. The average web site sells less than 10 units a year, whether CD’s or downloads.
Is building a web site worth the effort? Emphatically, yes! Absolutely. Another fact: You have to know what you are doing. My partners and I have crafted quite a few web sites that are selling a stable 5-10 units a day! Our best-selling web site shipped over 3000 units last year.
We’ve discovered through years of research, experimenting and hard work. Yes, it took us a lot of trial and error. Nevertheless, it comes down to good old common sense.
Stop wasting your time! If you really want to make a living out of your music, quit dreaming of getting signed to EMI. Start selling your music on your own! You will not earn millions of dollars. But if you combine Internet marketing that works with touring and merchandising, you should make a decent living as an independent musician.
Jerry's Blog
Amanda Palmer, Kickstarter Millionaire…
But can this be done again, and again, and again? Or are we just ogling at another lottery winner?
This was the scene on Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday.
Backers: 20,822
Pledged (of $100,000 goal): $1,000,000
Hours to go: 58
And this was the rest of the scene…
http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120529palmer
* Filestube.com, heard of it? Well, the recording industry has: according to stats just released by Google, Filestube has been the subject of the most takedown notices yet (in search). That is, more than the Pirate Bay and Hulkshare, among others.
* Big screen, small audience. On Tuesday, iHeartRadio announced an expansion into Google TV, a move that shifts the 800-plus station selection onto a much larger interface. Separately, the Clear Channel-owned app has also expanded into the Nook.
* Jambase has just launched a Facebook app, one designed to connect lots of concerts with lots of friends.
* “The frequency with which smaller venues are closing is scary,” NME editor Krissi Murison just told the Guardian in a rather dour piece about British club closings. “There’s the Charlotte in Leicester, TJ’s in Newport, I could go on and on. It feels like not a week goes past without more closing.”
* Sam Moore, he’s the ‘Legendary Soul Man’. But does that mean he can sue a film studio for making a movie that loosely arcs his life story (called, Soul Men)? No, according to a federal court ruling just issued, which found that the Sam & Dave soulman wasn’t infringed by the Weinstein Co. biopic. Or, damaged by libel or unfair competition, among other allegations.
* And, on the topic of barbed legal entanglements, there’s a new development in the long-running dispute between No Doubt and Activision. No Doubt argues that their avatars were misused without adequate warning in Band Hero; the group’s lawyers have just been granted the right to argue in front of a jury.
* Ouch! Facebook keeps tanking… this time to $28.84 by the Tuesday bell. That’s a near-10 percent one-day drop, spurred by negative bets.
* And, that already appears to be dragging an ecosystem of Facebook-connected businesses, including VEVO. The video upstart has been rumored to be pondering an IPO. “A jump into the shark-infested IPO waters right now would destroy all the momentum [Vevo] has created for itself,” a source just told the New York Post.
* They speak your language! Viki, an innovative TV play that relies on crowdsourced lyrics translations, has just inked licensing deal with Warner Music Group.
* Pepsi is unwrapping aspects of its music campaign on Twitter. The action starts with free downloads this week, then progresses towards streaming ‘pop-up concerts’ with heavy ‘crowd’ participation.
