Music. Marketing. Social Media.

There’s a lot of talk these days about MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.  What isn’t often discussed (or to be honest, thought about, if you’re an artist) is the data ownership aspect of each of these networks. A lot of artists have moved away from email marketing and towards social marketing – and as a result, not as much focus is placed on building and maintaining a healthy email list.

Preferences Change Over Time

As an artist, your music will evolve over time. Your fan base will hopefully grow with you, but in order to help that growth, you need a consistent way to connect with your fans.  Five years ago, they were on MySpace.  Today, they’re most likely on Facebook, and some are on Twitter.

What hasn’t changed is their love of your music. What has changed is the tools they use to communicate with each other online.

You’re probably on all of the networks they participate in already. You have a MySpace Music page, a Facebook Fan page, and a Twitter handle.

Great and fabulous.

What happens if MySpace, Facebook and Twitter all shut down – tomorrow?

Do you have any way to reach out to your fans left, or did your options just disappear?

For most of you out there, your options just went out the window.

It’s great to connect with your fans where they already exist online, but this shouldn’t be your only way of connecting with them.  As an artist, you need to own your audience, or at least, know their email address!

Here are some easy ways to start your email list:

Put a “sign up for our email” prompt on every page you have – Many tools are free (like MailChimp, for example) and provide the ability to create a form. Look, ma, it’s automated and organized!

Have an email sign-up sheet at the door of every gig – Go old school and collect email/mailing addresses and other information by hand. They’re coming to your show, obviously they’re interested!

Create a website and (you guessed it), put a “Sign up for our email” prompt on every page – Web hosting services can be fairly cheap, and there are many free systems out there (like WordPress, which I use), to help you create and maintain a site, even if you don’t know anything about designing a website.

If you get into a conversation with someone and take it private (DM’s, Facebook Messages, etc), send them your email and invite them to continue the conversation via email.

Include your email/website address on everything – videos, flyers, your website, business cards, etc.

Most importantly – make it WORTH your fans time to sign up for your emails. I’ll cover how to effectively email them in a further post, but start thinking about the emails you like reading, keeping in mind the marketing emails you always look out for.

Do you have any more ideas about how to build your email list? Any success stories to share? The comments are yours – so leave ‘em!

Who doesn’t love the Muppets?!

A crowd-sourced music video for a charity song in the UK – uber cool and for a great cause.

For the drummers among us… I STILL get giddy when I watch this!

Photo provided by mike.jw under a Creative Commons license

An article recent came out at the Boston Globe, talking about the Millennial generation and the vinyl to digital transition of music.

“The younger generation has no romantic attachments to records as physical objects. To them, music exists as a kind of omnipresent atmospheric resource.

And it’s not that I begrudge them their online treasure troves or bite-size iPods. But I still miss the way it used to be, in the old days, when fans had to invest serious time and money to track down the album or song they wanted.

What I’m getting at here is a deeper irony: technology has made the pursuit of our pleasures much easier. But in so doing, I often wonder if it has made them less sacred. My children will grow up in a world that makes every song they might desire instantly available to them. And yet I sort of pity them that they will never know the kind of yearning I did.”

Even though I grew up mainly in the cassette and compact disc eras, I love vinyl. I love the feel of a record in my hands. I miss looking at the artwork on the vinyl itself or the packaging.

Music is an art form, both in sound, and in sight. Liner notes in CD’s have lately been reduced to a single slip of paper, instead of the large-format prints of the 90’s. Cassettes are all but forgotten, but vinyl has seen a surge in popularity as of late, selling close to a million albums in 2008, up over 15% from sales in 2007.

Time Inc. ran an article about this very subject in 2008, aptly titled “Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back”.

“Album extras Large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos (some even have full-size posters tucked in the sleeve) and liner notes are a big draw for young fans. “Alternative rock used to have 16-page booklets and album sleeves, but with iTunes there isn’t anything collectible to show I own a piece of this artist,” says Dreese of Newbury Comics.”

What was lost, and is now being found, is the second art of music sales.

The packaging.

I, for one, am happy to see that particular art form return.

I recently had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Social Fresh Cruise, an invite-only social media 4-day floating conference/cruise from Miami to Cozumel.

The cruise was part conference, part pure fun. I was one of eight speakers for the conference portion of the cruise, and spoke about “The Recording Industry is Screwed… Now What Do We Do?”

Why yes, I do like to stir the pot. Thanks for asking.

The 45-minute “speech” was more of an open discussion, prefaced by a bit of background about the industry.

The background centered around the alternatives that exist, allowing musician to carve their own paths and often times, decide IF they even want a record deal with a major label.

The discussion portion of the talk was the most valuable, and many people contributed their thoughts, opinions and experiences about the music and recording industires.

The discussion ranged from how research completed in the 80’s about how people would contribute and use the Internet is still relevant, from how one of the attendees favorite bands used Kickstarter to finance their projects.  Many of the attendees had their own experiences to share about connecting with artists on Twitter, and as we were on the cruise with Rick Springfield’s fan club, we ALL could see a real-life example about how connecting directly with an audience really works.

To talk a bit more about one of the best comments of the discussion, I’m going to jump back and discuss a bit about my personal tastes:

I REALLY like a great debate, and really enjoy people intelligently disagreeing with my opinions. As mentioned, the highlight of the talk came from one such comment by Lucretia Pruitt, who made the excellent point that the recording industry is experiencing what a lot of other industries go through when a seismic shift in their business model occurs. Hint: This shift for the recording industry begins with an “I” and rhymes with schminternet.

In general, innovation comes from the bottom up. The start-up, the smaller companies and the ones that have “less to lose” take the “risk” and innovate. They try out new things, see what works and adopt that into their strategy. The bigger more entrenched companies usually wait to see if what the smaller guys do works. If so, they copy it and make it part of their business. Less risk with potentially the same rewards.

Now, I’m not saying that this is an absolute, but it’s certainly a trend.

The difference with the music industry, is that the “big guys” have fought against this change for the better part of a decade, instead of embracing it and trying to innovate from the beginning.  From a PR perspective, that decision has caused a huge problem for the public image of the music industry.  In many people’s minds, it is now “us vs. the music industry”, especially “us vs. the RIAA”.

I’m thrilled to see some of the “big guys” waking up and beginning to realize that the “stick my head in the sand” approach is NOT a smart move, but they must do this while remembering that consumer perception is still a huge concern.

I have much more to say on this topic, and am starting with a conversation today at 3:30PM EST/ 12:30PM PST where I’ll be participating in an un-panel on SnazL with Mary McKnight (EMI, Sacrilicious Marketing) and Mike Fabio (Warner Bros. records).

Join the un-panel and upload a video, share photos or chat to participate.

I’M ON A BOAT! Yes, really. I’m on a cruise to Mexico currently, but just had to queue up this post to share some randomness with you while I sun myself and consume fruity tropical drinks for a few days. On with it!

Lee Scratch Perry (dub LEGEND) explains how things shifted from dub to dubstep over the years. Slight promo for his new stuff at the end, but the video is quality regardless.

Ghostbusters Theme Song Multitrack – just plain fun!

Video Interview with DJ Elijah (Butterz)