Music Marketing
January 19th, 2009 by Lior ShamirThe digital media age has brought about a new breed of music marketing professionals armed with next-generation music marketing tools and savvy. Cheap and, often, free online music marketing solutions are at the disposal of anyone with an internet connection. However, today’s music marketing leaders are not your average Joe’s. Dare I coin the term: music marketing Joe 2.0?
Budding young marketers are spending more time finding and sorting through information online – looking for patterns, clues, leads, characteristics etc. – that will help them learn more about their target audience and build relationships on behalf of their clients, as opposed to wining and dining with label executives. Sad really, but music marketing is a different game now. A decade ago, artists were still ‘enjoying’ the luxury of a label financed focus group and the gut feeling of the music managers at the top. Today, they’re either getting feedback themselves from social networks or fortunate enough to have a music marketing wizard on their team to do the dirty work for them. In other words, independent artists have been forced to become promoters and professional artists (i.e. financed artists) outsource to music marketing specialists as opposed to relying on old school record industry tactics.
Although the revenue pyramid still looks the same – a handful of megastars at the top, a long tail of independent artists at the bottom – new digital media has leveled the playing field and empowered fledgling artists with music marketing solutions only the megastars had access to but a decade ago.