It seems like most of the news about the big music business companies lately has been nothing but doom and gloom.  By and large, it’s been the startups like TuneCore, TopSpin, BandCamp, SoundCloud, last.fm, iLike, Rdio and others that have been pushing the envelope and taking advantage of the new opportunities within the marketplace.

However, things seem to have taken a bit of a shift recently.

Facebook, which has long been admonished for not providing tools for musicians (among other things), launched Music on Facebook. With it, they provide a pretty decent step-by-step best practices guide for getting the most of out Facebook, not only for musicians, but for fans and venues.

Along with that, Billboard Pro has caught my attention. The service is $99/year, and even though you have to have a MySpace Music page to participate (more on that later), it’s by no means limited to MySpace.

The team behind this kindly provided an answer to the question that popped into my mind when I read the part about having to have a MySpace Music profile a bit later on in the FAQ section:

Why do you require that artists use Myspace Music to be on Uncharted or to join Billboard Pro?

Billboard is synonymous in the world of music with its charts, and in order to create a platform for exposing the efforts of new and developing artists, we created Uncharted. Our charts have historically been based on comprehensive sales and airplay data. To have as comprehensive a view of the online music landscape as possible, we formed a data partnership with the largest artist community on the internet, from the perspective of both the number of artists and fans participating: Myspace Music.

Billboard Pro subscribers can track fan engagement from many different sources, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and more recently launched music-specific services like ReverbNation and Soundcloud. We plan to add additional relevant data sources as the digital music landscape evolves. If there’s a source that you’d like to see included, please share it with us.

I know, I’m harping on the MySpace thing quite a bit. It’s nothing personal against Billboard Pro, and I actually caught myself nodding my head after I read their reasoning for requiring the MySpace Music account. After all, we know that Facebook wasn’t really an option. Instead of forcing artists to create something new, choosing to tie in with an existing presence – one with a righ data history – is a strategically smart move.

I also really like how Billboard Pro is open to including other music services into their analytics tool, and already includes quite a few, like “YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, iLike and Wikipedia, among others.” Their blog is also chock-full of good information – everything from industry news to how-to’s and tips and arguably a great resource for a musician, even if they’re not subscribed to the Pro service.

Final Verdict

I’m a fan of these two moves. Facebook is finally realizing that people want to connect with musicians on their site (no doubt they’ll figure out how to monetize Music on Facebook in the coming months), and Billboard is taking their industry prowess and turning their attention to the people who are fueling the growth in the industry – up-and-coming artists.

What have your experiences with Facebook been like? Have you noticed the recent changes? Have you signed up for Billboard Pro? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

I’ve been following Hypebot’s 3-part series (so far) about DJ Shadow’s marketing plan for his current tour, Shadowsphere.  If you haven’t read it, it’s a great series.

Overall, the thing that sticks with me throughout the series is the attention to detail that Shadow’s Marketing Manager (Michael – and make that “Project, Marketing and Merchandise Manager“) has used to build out their strategy and tactics for managing the tour.  Instead of trying to find one solution for all aspects of the tour promotion, Michael’s using many different tools, each designed to do one thing very well.

For event-based marketing, Michael’s lined up the following arsenal:

• Facebook (yeah, more on this in a bit)
• iPhone app (with geo-targeted push notifications!)
• Square at merchandise tables
• Street team
• Buttons (yeah really, buttons!)
• Merchandise (with multiple price points)

Now, for the more long-term aspect of marketing DJ Shadow for this tour (and after), Michael and Shadow are all over the place – in a good way!

• djshadow.com
• DJ Shadow iPhone app (including a merchandise section within the app)
• SMS text campaign for a free download
• Email marketing (with signup at the merchandise table)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• iLike
• Reverbnation

Seriously, they’re everywhere! Wait, did you miss that? That’s the point!

Let me explain.  A lot of people (businesses included, not just musicians!) take the approach of only marketing themselves where they feel comfortable doing so.  This means that if they’ve not used Reverbnation or iLike before, they’re not going to look at it in terms of what marketing potential it holds.  Starting from where you feel comfortable is the opposite approach that you should be taking, as it’s really not about you. It’s about your customers/fans and where they are and where they want to connect with you.

Now, getting back to Facebook! I’d like to highlight this gem:

Bottom line: Facebook works because they figured out the ultimate formula for data portability.  The fact that I can post a geo-targeted update on Facebook, and that update will post to users within a specific geographic location, who can then share it with their entire network, is marketing gold.  When I update Shadow fans about a show, I only want to update the fans in the region of where that show is.  The beauty is, those people can then go and share it with ALL of their friends, wherever they may be, who in turn may click the link, and be redirected to the Shadow Facebook, or better yet, DJShadow.com.  This takes away the problem of mass-marketing a show for a specific region, but gives it the ability to go viral on a wider level than just the region targeted.  This also creates the ability for 1 show to begin an online buzz for the entire tour.

I’ve posted about my annoyance with people that do what Michael is referring to above – the lack of geo-targeting with event invites. I LOVE the fact that they’re taking this into account and putting the power in their fans hands to promote the event for them, without over-saturating them to the point of annoyance with invitations to events they can’t attend.

For the email marketing, the merch table with multiple price points and the street team – my lesson is this.  Don’t abandon the basics.

If you have a well-kept email list, use it! People are going to want to by souvenirs from the concert, so give them options! If you have people who want to marketing for you on the streets, use them to get the word out the “old fashioned” way. Don’t throw away everything you’ve done in the past for something that seems the shiny new object – you’ll just end up seeing scattered and cause your fans to be in a perpetual state of confusion over where they can find you.

Kudos to DJ Shadow and Michael for putting together a solid marketing plan for the tour!

If you haven’t heard the news, MySpace has purchased iLike, the “most popular music service on Facebook” (according to their About page).

This makes a lot of sense, though it may cause some controversy.

MySpace has positioned itself as the entertainment-focused social network. You go there to listen to music, get show updates, view trailers, and interact with personalities, not necessarily friends.  Facebook, in comparison, is about primarily connecting with people you know (or knew), not brands.

Artists have been moving from MySpace to Facebook en masse lately, maintaining a profile on each site, but using them differently in many cases. Why? It relates back to the networks themselves…

MySpace, at it’s heart, is about a push model of social interaction.

Create page –> Find people who you think may be interested –> Add them as a friend –> Comment and share info about your music –> Repeat

Facebook is about a distinctly pull model of social interaction.

Create fan page (or group) –> People find you –> You post content that appears in their updates/on their wall –> They share on your behalf –> Repeat

iLike is a hybrid. The service itself is about the push, but artists can use it to spread their message and extend their virtual reach, enhancing their pull.

Strategically, the acquisition was a great move for MySpace for a few reasons.  Now it’s even easier to syndicate content across multiple social networks (important when your users “home” is a network that is NOT your own), and the buy helps MySpace strengthen their positioning as THE entertainment-focused social network.