This photo provided by designwallah under a Creative Commons License

In the midst of my “4P’s of Marketing” series, I thought a dose of reality, aka “what this all means for me in the real world” would be helpful.

For those that know me personally, you undoubtedly know that I think the world is a very small place.  From running into the first person I met at college while on the tram at Gatwick airport, to meeting a co-worker’s girlfriend at a bar who has worked with my uncle (a professional photographer) before, this theory has been proven over and over again.

It was again proven true last night, when I met Andrew from Half Fiction. One of the three partners is a guy by the name of Sage, and in addition to having at least one person in common through a few degrees of separation (See? Small world!), he is the inspiration for this post.

Sage is involved with a number of projects, one of which is Ready Fire Aim.  Kind enough to send me their electronic press kit, I took a stroll around the RFA website and happened upon this blog post.

By way of a preface, I write from the perspective of a marketer who has been obsessed and involved (the playing and listening kind, not creepy ‘involved’ romantically kind) with music her entire life.  Sage’s perspective is that of a performer, and someone making a living off of their art. Excerpts provided below (emphasis mine), but you really should go read the whole thing here.

….I am going to say however that it is seriously hard fucking work rehearsing non stop and trying to work to pay the bills and have any kind of personal life at all. I call it rockstar 2.0–all work and very little play.

The days of letting the label do all the work while the artist gets fucked up, throws TVs out the window of expensive hotel suites and does irreparable damage to the room are long gone. GOOD RIDDANCE. The middle man is no longer required. What is required is that every band leader think like a brand manager. That every artist must also come correct with an unlimited supply of elbow grease and a multi-tool in his/her back pocket is also a given, but the truth is that no amount of work on the part of the artist can compensate for one crucial factor–the only thing that REALLY TRULY MATTERS regardless of label support, management, agenting or directing from ‘on high’–THE FANS and their support.

In the last 2 weeks for some strange reason I have been contacted by more people who are saying that they have bought or want to buy my record, love the music and listen to it all the time and are telling all their friends about it than in the last 2 years combined… Not only does this make me want to keep working, it makes me want to please my fans. It makes me want to work harder longer and more intensely to make them happy and keep making music-music they laugh, cry, dance, make out, have sex, meet/break up with boyfriends and girlfriends, cook dinner, drive and dance in their undies lip-synching into their hairbrush to. In other words, music to live life to–a partner/soundtrack to whatever it is that they are doing. The digital revolution makes that possible...

In a perfect world there would be no free downloading and I would be paid a fair wage for my work. Music is free and a whole generation now thinks of their media as a portable, constitutional, God ordained, inalienable right. You can either play a Lars Ulrich… or you can adapt, roll with the change-by-the-hour tide of technology and figure out a way to get people to WANT to pay you… I’m not sure why or how that is going to happen en masse but for my part as long as i can continue to engage my fans on a one-to-one level and initiate real contact between artist and consumer of art (fan has egomaniacal connotations to me so I’m going to try and stop using it) who is a REAL person on the other end of the phone, keyboard or social media platform then I will consider myself a successful artist.

…That means that the labels really ARE irrelevant as long as I outsource carefully and creatively certain aspects of the business to individuals who know how to do that better than me. That means that the fat bloated days of rockstar entitlement to bad behavior, mountains of drugs and waiting rooms of young women (and the fat bloated middlemen who plied them with it all so they could ROB THEM BLIND while they were drunk, high and fucking their brains out in extravagant hotels they were unwittingly paying for) are gone for good–replaced with the leaner meaner rockstar 2.0 approach of DIY ingenuity and hard work, the very things that made America great. See rock and roll IS America. Rock and Roll has become what our parents and grandparents did to put food on the table and roofs over our heads–just another job. It’s come full circle to being willing to do the work, play the game and write the songs that make the whole world sing from some ‘Alice down the rabbit hole’ wanderland that it has been for the last 4 decades.

In the end it all comes down to one person reaching out and touching another (consensually of course) and the honest exchange of some dollars for doughnuts as my dad would say, and to that end, my dear reader YOU are the most important part of the equation-not me. And so on this, the moment before I go and play the most strategically critical show of my life, the one for which I have rehearsed for 15 years I want to thank you for not only reading my drivel but for buying my music, telling your friends, for dancing mostly naked in front of mirrors and writing to tell me about it. YOU give me a reason to keep working non-stop all day and night, sweating my tits off in a shoebox rehearsal space at 10 in the morning 3 times a week after staying up til 4am editing and posting videos on my 20+ social media platforms. . . and for that I am EXTREMELY grateful! IT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING.

In case you’re too lazy to click on the blog post, Sage posts Beautiful Thing as a track at the end of the entry. Listen here.

What’s the point?

The point is that it’s about the music and the fans… it’s ALWAYS been about the music and the fans. For awhile, the business got in the way. Now? The business model is broken, and it’s back to the music and the fans.

Go through and read about how to figure out what your product is, how to price it (that post was a struggle to write), and then learn about where to put it and how to market it… but relate it to your life. Relate it to your art, and make it work for you.

Following up on the introductory post to this series, you should be armed with answers to the following questions.

What is my ultimate goal?

What do I want to achieve on the way to my ultimate goal?

Why am I in the music business; what’s my motivation?

If I’m going to make money off of this venture, what are the ways I see myself doing so?

How in the hell am I going to measure success?

These answers are important to know before reading the rest of the series, as each post incorporates answers from one or more questions.

Your product forms the foundation for the other 3 P’s (Price, Place and Promotion).  In order:

• Product – What are you going to sell?
• Price – How much are you going to sell it for?
• Place – Where are you going to sell it?
• Promotion – How are you going to get the word out?

To make this simple, I’m going to use the example of a band throughout this post series.

My fictional band is based in NY, plays live hip hop and has 4 female members.

Product

Before committing your life, or at least a significant portion of your life, to making a living from making music, every musician should sit down and consider what their product(s) will be.

If you haven’t woken up and smelled the french-pressed coffee yet, the days of making a few mediocre songs, getting picked up by a label, produced six ways from Sunday and making millions are gone.  Musicians now have the ability to be their label, be their manager, be their tour promoter, and be their own music marketing machine.  But, as they say, with power, comes responsibility.

These questions should help:

1. What do I pay money for now, music-wise?
2. What do I want to buy, but currently can’t, from my favorite bands?
3. How can I add value to my fan’s lives?
4. What makes me different?
5. How can I make money off of what makes me different?

If you need help brainstorming, check out this list of 29 streams of revenue for musicians.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonysalvi/    CC:BY-NC-ND 2.0

Examples

Our pretend hip hop band answered these questions, and their answers are listed below:

Q: What do I pay money for now, music-wise?

A: I buy tracks I like online from iTunes or Beatport, but rarely buy a full album.  I also buy t-shirts, limited edition records and concert tickets.

Q: What do I want to buy, but currently can’t, from my favorite bands?

A: Since we’re musicians, we’d love to buy a recording session or face-to-face interview with one of my favorite musicians in the band to see how they made it big, and learn how to improve how I play.  I’d also love to buy better concert tickets since I’m such a loyal fan. I’d really love to sit in the front row!

Q: How can I add value to my fan’s lives?

A: I can share my talents with my fans through music lessons and recording sessions. Or, I can work with aspiring solo hip hop artists on their lyrics.  I can spend time with them backstage at gigs, and I can connect with them online.  We’ve all been touched by cancer, so we can also link up with the American Cancer Society to put on a fundraiser concert. We can certainly involve our fans that have also been touched by cancer to volunteer.

Q: What makes me different?

A: We’re an all-female live hip hop band, which makes us very different.  You don’t see many all-female bands, or many live hip hop bands.  Also, we theme each show – our last one was Kriss Krossed, for example.

Q: Out of the answers above, which ones can I make money from?

A: I can immediately make sure our music is available on iTunes and Beatport (perhaps by using Tunecore), and I can also connect with fans online (using ArtistData to manage everything) and invite them to one of our themed concerts.

Once our popularity grows, we can release limited edition CD’s of our music. We’ll put out three versions – one, just a CD with a basic jacket, and another that is a CD/DVD package featuring lots of extras, uncut versions, takes from recording sessions and backstage videos.  The highest level will also come with a signed baseball cap in addition to the CD/DVD package.

We can also start a contest when we get this popular. Half of the proceeds will go to benefit a cancer charity of our choice since it’s a cause close to our hearts.  The contest will be like an auction, allowing fans to bid on signed merchandise, as well as the top prize of recording with us to create their own song.

Ok, Now What?

Now it’s your turn.  Open up a document on your computer, put up paper on the wall and grab some markers, or get out some old fashioned pen and paper and start writing.  It’s important to brainstorm right now. Even if you can’t use an answer immediately, keep them all to see if any become relevant as time progresses.

Once you’re done answering the questions you should have a lot of ideas.  Don’t worry about how much you’ll sell these things for, or even if they can be sold.  The ideas are what we want at this point.

Are there any other questions you would ask at this point in the game? Leave them in the comments if so!

The next post “How Much Is This Worth?” goes into detail about ” can it be sold” and “if so, for how much?”.  Stay tuned…