SONG CONTEST BLOG

Audiolife is an LA-based artist services company founded in 2005 by three USC graduates.  Their mission is “to create a middle-class in the music industry by giving all artists simple tools to generate revenue so they can spend time on what they love and do best – make music!”.  Currently in public beta, the company announced this week that it will be accepting submissions for its “Artist Advancement Scholarship”, an initiative geared toward college level music school students, artists and otherwise, in pursuit of a professional career in the music industry.  Don’t let the inclusion of the word “scholarship” fool you though; this is a writing exercise where $500 cash is on the table for one winner, not a scholarship application to potentially finance your future academic studies.  I imagine that Audiolife is seeking to achieve two things with this campaign, the first is to establish the company’s perceived value and, the second, to  draw more users to learn about their offering by writing competitively about it.  Personally, I would prefer to reward the best ten applications with $50 each and use their essays as original content on the site to raise Audiolife’s natural search ranking…

Applications must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. PST on April 1, 2009, in the form of an essay addressing the question, “How do you see Audiolife affecting the music industry in the next two or three years?”, in 1000 words or less.  Students in any accredited academic university or music institution enrolled at least part-time during the 2009 academic school year are eligible.  A winner will be selected by Audiolife’s management team and announced by April 20th, 2009.  Essays should be emailed to Travis Dean at travis[at]audiolife.com

Songness, launched last summer, provides a platform for songwriters and performing artists to receive feedback from prospective fans.  Much like the SoundOut concept, Songness is geared toward populating relevant marketing reports through “virtual focus groups” that will help its music-making users identify potential fans and improve their craft through constructive criticism.  Songness has taken a unique approach to artist-to-fan interaction by focusing on the relationship between the artist and fan as the music is being created, rewritten and improved, rather than engaging the fan with the finished musical product, a strategy which OurStage and Sellaband have deployed with lots of financing and reasonable traction (see The Next Big Sound also).  With Songness, the idea is to test your songs before you go to market.  There is also the promise of turning new fans into paying customers but here, I think, Songness may be getting carried away.  I haven’t signed-up yet but the site looks good and the concept relevant.

Motley Crue’s guitarist, Mick Mars, has struck a deal with the celebrity services division of Paid Inc., a new media company with a strong focus on online relationship and ecommerce solutions for celebrities, to build a brand new website at www.MickMars.tv  and host a range artist-to-fan relationship features to maximize Mars’ online presence.  In addition to offering Mar’s musical portfolio, the site will introduce  new and exclusive guitar clinics, educational resources, and personal performance tips and video demonstrations.  There will also be a strong focus on authentic Motley memorabilia and a new line of merchandise, all under the Paid Inc. celebrity brand management umbrella.

Ethan Diamond, the brain behind OddPost, the web mail service acquired by Yahoo! and, more recently, founder of Bandcamp, dispatched a newsletter today announcing the band portal’s new feature-set and recent upgrades.  The free publishing platform boasts nifty and relevant tools for artists and band promoters to optimize their online presence and provide an uber-cool experience for fans and new comers.  Armed with features such as domain redirection to a unique domain name within the site, fan email capturing on transactions, and IP licensing control (courtesy of Creative Commons) associated with the variety of ways to transmit music files, Bandcamp is set to become a popular choice for the brand conscious and online promotion savvy music community.  In addition to Bandcamp’s visual bells and whistles and you-control-your-music ethos, the company focuses on pertinent music file meta-tagging and artist profile-specific search engine optimization for its individual members.  Did I mention that it’s free?  Bandcamp is really quite simple, down to earth, and rather wonderful.

If you Google – myspace music marketing – you will find a medley of useless tips on how to add more friends, write enticing messages, customize your page, and do more of what approximately 3 million active musicians on myspace are already doing, most of whom are still not getting any more attention than they did when they first joined.  Don’t get me wrong, I love myspace and I believe that myspace music marketing is absolutely essential.  Actually, I hate myspace but I do believe it’s essential and, now, a music industry standard.

Forget about robots for your myspace music marketing strategy.  And don’t worry, labels are no longer counting the number of friends and plays on your profile (it’s hard to believe they ever did!) so you need not spend all day and night adding friends aimlessly.  Start thinking about a targeted myspace music marketing approach whereby you only contact ‘friends’ you truly believe will take an interest in you and your music.  After all, online social networking answers to the same principles as day to day networking: you may work the room, but you don’t go into business with everyone you meet.

If you’re eager to raise your profile, dig deeper.  Rather than thinking about your number of friends, think about the ratio of friends vs. plays.  For example, If you have 1000 friends and 1000 plays, that should raise a big red flag: your friends accepted your invitation, listened to your music once (on average), and never came back.  For a truly effective myspace music marketing approach, keep your outreach to a minimum and focus on the folks that listen to your brand of music, attend live shows by artists with mutual musical qualities, and are likely to show up to your next gig.  If you don’t play outside of Nevada, why badger someone in Minnesota every other day?  Keep your myspace music marketing initiatives user-specific, short, and to the point.  Spend less time marketing to everyone and more time marketing to a small group of truly potential fans.  Before you know it, your myspace music marketing campaigns will be powered by your fanbase, a more potent and authoritative music marketing force than just you.

The 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.

This is an exciting time for the music industry and its emerging artists.  Although there is still some confusion as to how music should be consumed online, it is evident that the systems available to both the artist and the consumer are challenging the traditional practice of the music industry, specifically the record industry.  The internet has empowered artists with user-friendly applications for self promotion and sales.  Resultantly, consumers can reach artists directly and visa versa.  This relationship allows the artist to take control of his business.  For instance, performing artists and songwriters can now choose to make their songs available online on a specific date for a specific period of time, set the price, provide discounts or even share them for free, all which are decisions typically taken by the record label.  Not anymore, for the most part.

In today’s music industry, the potential for you to develop a direct and intimate relationship with your audience is far greater than ever before.  By nurturing a relationship with your fanbase, you are in fact learning about their wants and needs, likes and dislikes and, of course, how to increase your appeal.  Consider the value of truly ‘knowing’ your audience, no matter how big you’re fortunate enough to become. 

Although the record industry has taken a massive beating and will probably continue to, the music industry is fit and healthy and beginning to embrace a prosperous new dawn.

Next Big Sound, a site developed by four students at Northwestern University and described as a cross between MySpace and American Idol by The New York Times, has come to fruition last August as yet another platform for independent artists and fans to come together in a digital environment of discovery and competition.  Better described as another player in the realm of Sellaband and OurStage, The Next Big Sound looks great and promises adventure in role-play A&R for music fans and, with any luck, an opportunity for independent artists to raise their profile.

The site boasts 2000 “moguls” that have “signed” 9000 acts to date.  The business model surrounding the idea is not yet clear but, if it takes off, I imagine that there will be plenty of opportunities for the company, participating artists and, of course, moguls (music fans) to monetize a piece of the proverbial action.

Overplay, the independent artist platform for music promotion and discovery, announced today that they have given their website a facelift and added some exciting new interface features.  To celebrate this re-launch, Overplay are accepting free entries for their international song competition, “Play & Rate”, for which I have been a member of their song competition panel for some time now.

Since 2003, Overplay has been providing independent artists and fans with communication tools and promotional incentives with a one-stop-shop platform.  In addition to a variety of awards, sweeps and the “Play & Rate” international song competition, Overplay empowers fledgling artists to sell their digital assets and merchandise directly to their fanbase.

The record industry, worth approximately $31 billion globally in 2006, is a large slice of the much broader and more than three times larger ‘music industry‘, worth more than $130 billion.  With record sales dipping and alternative revenue streams coming into significant play, a broader view of the music business, namely the live, gaming and film/television licensing, and publishing sectors, is warranted for budding professionals.  In spite of the bad rep, the record industry remains to be one of the most creatively oriented sectors in media with 20% of its revenues invested in the acquisition and development of new talent.  This is a staggering figure for R&D investment in intellectual property.  Although this investment is still being recouped from record sales, revenue goldmines are being discovered in other media sectors which are increasingly more prominent than the traditional retail sources. Recorded music has become a key influencer in the mobile industry and a pivotal consumer offering in $100 billion worth of broadband subscriptions in 2006. The live performance sector is growing rapidly and its promising, future effect on music merchandising and sponsorship remains to be seen.

While the record industry appears to be an exclusive club, every artist recording and, in one form or another, publishing music is, in fact, a part of it.  As music converges with other media, so does the record industry with other industries.  As such, as more and more artists produce and publish great new music, more opportunities arise for monetizing their copyright without the dependency on actual record sales.