The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online
Published in Releases. Auhor: drew
The 20 Things You
Must Know About
Music Online
by Andrew Dubber
New Music Strategies
Introduction
You’re always hearing that the music business has changed. That’s not quite true. In fact, it’s changing – and that’s quite a different thing.
Facing that change, and negotiating it as it happens, is one of the biggest
challenges for independent music businesses. The best way to navigate in
such interesting times is to really understand what’s going on around you, so you can adapt and respond appropriately. You don’t have to be a computer whiz – you just have to understand some basic principles. I reckon there are about 20 of them. If you understand these, and apply their principles, you’re off to a good start in the new media environment.
They’re in no particular order. They’re all important. I’ll start by listing them,
and then I’ll go into each in a bit more detail.
1
Don’t Believe the Hype:
Sandi Thom, the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen are not super famous,
rich and successful just because of MySpace, and nor because they
miraculously drew a crowd of thousands to their homegrown webcast.
PR, traditional media, record labels and money were all involved.
2
Hear / Like / Buy:
It’s the golden rule. People hear music, then they like music, then they
buy music. It’s the only order it can happen in. If you try to do it in any
other sequence, it just won’t work.
3
Opinion Leaders Rule:
We know the importance of radio and press. There are now new
opinion leaders who will tell your story with credibility. You need to
find out who they are — or better yet, become one of them.
4
Customise:
A tailored solution at best, or at the very least a bespoke kitset approach
to your web presence is crucial. An off-the-shelf number will almost
guarantee your anonymity.
5
The Long Tail:
Chris Anderson has pretty much proved that the future of retail is
selling less of more. Put everything online. Expand your catalogue. You
will make more money selling a large number of niche products than
you will selling a few hits.
6
Web 2.0:
Forget being a destination — become an environment. Your website
is not a brochure — it’s a place where people gather and connect with
you and with each other.
7
Connect:
Your website is not a promotional strategy. Learn how to tell a story, and
learn how to tell it in an appropriate fashion for web communication.
Think about how that could be translated for both new media and
mainstream PR outlets.
8
Cross-promote:
Your online stuff is not a replacement for your offline stuff, and nor does
it exist independently of it. Figure out how to make the two genuinely
intersect.
9
Fewer Clicks:
This is especially true if you want somebody to part with their money. If
I have to fill in a form, navigate through three layers of menu and then
enter a password, I don’t want your music any more.
10
Professionalism:
If this is your business, you need to be businesslike. Treat your
online profile the same way you would treat any of your business
communication.
11
The Death of Scarcity:
The economics of the internet is fundamentally different to the
economics of the world of shelves and limited stock. You can give away
a million copies of your record in order to sell a thousand.
12
Distributed Identity:
From a PR perspective, you are better off scattering yourself right across
the internet, than you are staying put in one place. Memberships,
profiles, comments, and networks are incredibly helpful.
13
SEO:
You need to understand how Search Engine Optimisation works, and
how you can maximise your chances of being found. Be both findable
— and searchable.
14
Permission:
Your message must be welcome, relevant and personally useful. Letting
people choose to engage with you is a far more effective targetting
strategy than spamming them.
15
RSS:
Provide it, use it and teach it. RSS is the single most important aspect of
your site. Treat it as such - but remember it’s still new for most people.
Help your audience come to grips with it.
16
Accessibility:
Not everyone has a fast computer or high speed access. Not everybody
has the gift of sight. Make everything you do online accessible. It’s easy
to do, it’s important, and it stops you from turning people away at the
door.
17
Reward & Incentivise:
Everything is now available all of the time. Give people a reason to
consider you as part of their economic engagement with music.
18
Frequency is everything:
Repeat business is one of the most successful commercial strategies
in the cultural industries. You want people to come back? Give them
something to come back to that they haven’t seen before.
19
Make it viral:
Whatever you do, make it something that people will want to send to
other people. Your best marketing is word of mouth, because online,
word of mouth is exponentially more powerful.
20
Forget product — sell relationship:
The old model of music business is dominated by the sale of an
individual artefact for a set sum of money. The new model is about
starting an ongoing economic relationship with a community of fans.