Is This Your Best Music Marketing Move?

Posted on 17 June 2010 by gregrollett

If this is your music marketing strategy you are in the wrong game. Seriously, this can’t be working for you.

A really bad music marketing strategy

So I’m calling you out @MONEYFAMMFG and I’m calling all my readers to call you out. Can you give this guy just one idea that is better than this @ reply (this is a friggin mass @ reply at that)?

I had 6 other artists do something similar today. Why today did it all hit my Twitter box:

diddy-retweeted-meMr @iamdiddy found a really cool guest post I did over at Think Traffic yesterday. We built some buzz with some ReTweets and it hit his radar.

If this isn’t real time proof that you need to keep putting out great content and building your network, well shit, I don’t know what is.

Here’s the post Diddy and the way he runs his business. Feel free to peep it out. Shout out to Corbett for letting me invade his space.

-G-Ro

P.S. I wrote about this a while ago and it may help you out MONEYFAMMFG. Don’t Turn Twitter Into Myspace

Travis McCoy Gives Away Lead Single Billionaire

Posted on 09 June 2010 by gregrollett

Travie is my homeboy. When Gym Class first dropped on the scene with Papercut Chronicles, my band was the only one even close to the sound his peeps were throwing together. Anyway, long story short, we got to play with them and I got to travel on a few Florida dates to drink some beers and eat some pizzas with the heroes.

Yesterday, Travis dropped his first solo offering on Decaydence/Fueled By Ramen dubbed Lazarus.

I’ve been checking the site to see what kind of promos they were going to be offering when I saw a blog post on his Myspace page giving away the lead single Billionaire.

This is obviously nothing new. What I thought was unique was that “Taco Bell” was sponsoring the download.

In talks with various record labels and private artist clients we have really put a focus on finding brands for cross promotions, sponsorships and ad dollars. The reason is simple – they have the money. Look at the money some companies dumped on a Super Bowl commercial.

Anyway, I’ll be getting more into this in a later post (I’m still way swamped with helping all the new BandWPThemes clients – did you get that yet?)

Here is the sequence of the downloads to get your brains spinning:

Anyway, just hope that gets your brain moving today. If you are into hip-hop, pop and some strange adventures, go support the homie Travis. Oh, and here is a pic of Travis repping my band StuMpP back in the day!

-Greg

P.S. I’ll be at the show in Orlando tonight if anyone wants to say hello.

Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga Marketing

Posted on 26 May 2010 by gregrollett

Just watched this video from TechCrunch Disrupt with Troy Carter, Lady Gaga’s manager and Scooter Braun, Justin Beiber’s manager. The video shows you just how powerful video and social media marketing is in breaking a big artist.

Some highlights I wanted to share:

  • Bieber spends 2+ hours a day on Twitter. This is a dude with a busy schedule. If you can’t find the time to connect with your fans, you might need to find a new passion to pursue.
  • Lady Gaga and her team create videos specifically for YouTube. They work in product placements, timing, pre-roll and post roll ads and more specifically for this format.
  • The majority of their money is still being made on the live show. I personally contribute this to not directly selling them packages.
  • There is not a lot of money in video ads. Don’t disrupt the fan’s experience for a few bucks.
  • Lady Gaga signed to Interscope off Myspace. Everyone agreed that Myspace is not important as a tool for discovering and signing acts. (get off Myspace and use WordPress, but wait till we launch our theme next week!)
  • Scooter said, “kids are going to buy the product if they really support the personality.” You know that I believe in this. People buy from people. Very impotant point. They don’t buy from marketing they buy from a connection with a person.
  • One question said what do you do with a talented artist that is not using this technology. Their answer was to pass on them. The artist has to want it and part of the business today involves using technology, making relationships and making good music. Music is only 1 part of the puzzle.

Hope you enjoyed the video. Let’s talk about this stuff in the comments.

-Greg

P.S. The BandWPThemes launch kicks off on Monday. Look for some killer videos and content on using the platform.

Rhymefest Is Creating A Business

Posted on 04 May 2010 by gregrollett

photo by Rhymefest

Rhymefest is dope. He’s a dope MC and performer. I saw him open for A Tribe Called Quest at HOB in Orlando a few years back. He rocked the crowd like he wasn’t supposed to. We were all there to see Tribe and Rhyme stole the show.

Quick background on Fest:

he wrote Jesus Walks for Kanye (Grammy Winner), dropped a slept on album called Blue Collar in 2006 on Mark Ronson’s Allido Records (single was Brand New) and has been a major force and voice in hip-hop for longer that you would believe.

Now he’s back and doing things on the Internet the way we like to see it. He just released a pay-what-you-want mixtape, Dangerous: 5-18 in honor of the release date of his next album, el che (actually dropping June 8th).

Bandcamp

To release the mixtape he didn’t go the all too easy but honestly stupid route of putting the .zip file on a sharing site like every other hip-hop artist does. Nope, Fest threw it up on Bandcamp, got himself a custom subdomain and hosted the tracks on his site. Fans can choose to cop the album for free, but they need to enter their email address and confirm it to download the 17 original tracks. Check the screenshot below:

Fest is building his list, segmenting it by location and purchase price and getting you free and original music and Bandcamp is doing all the work. Nice work.

Twitter

With Twitter he is connecting with fans, chatting with them about subjects most rappers and artists stay way, away from. The questions, the interactions and the RT’s only add to his popularity on the service. The other thing I love is that while he does push out some of his music, he gives more than he takes.

In the post on not using Twitter like Myspace, I mentioned a comment from Chris Brogan where you look at your last 10 Tweets and see who and what they were about. 7 of the last 10 Tweets from Fest are engaging his audience. Check the shot below:

Facebook

Most artists use Facebook to either copy over what they are saying on Twitter or really, leave it dormant. Not Fest. Here he is using the platform to connect with a different audience that the one that connects with him on Twitter. he gets the medium and in return, he is building his audience on this platform as well (29,000+). Check the shot below where he has wall posts about a contest for high school kids and his listening parties:

His Blog

Most artists plug themselves, or just post stale links to reviews or interviews that they did elsewhere. Fest uses his site to announce a Google Group for Independent Thinkers, hold debates, talk about show prep and more. Kudos for the effort man, blogging is tough work but it pays off. The only tips I could say would be in the WordPress structure, permalinks and SEO department.

Expanding His Reach To OPA

Using other sites expands the reach of this promotion. Today I caught wind of a guest post he wrote for DJ Booth. It was actually the 3rd part in a series. I speak about this all the time, but when you post on your site, you only get to reach your immediate audience and sometimes the trickle down effect from Google. Leveraging other people’s sites and audiences is huge, and here Rhymefest does it in an engaging way, that is way beyond just dropping another track.

In fact that is what he talks about in the article, Entitled DJ’s Are Creating Cheap Disposable Music.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately Rhymefest is working hard to expand his reach online and connect with his fans. He is building a database and creating tribes on multiple networks that are all distinct from each other. The engagement at each venue is different and tailored, while still being true to his brand. Even if he doesn’t notice it, he is building a business, one with window shoppers, fans and customers.

And these people are not going to sleep on “el che” when in drops this June.

What do you think of Rhymefest’s strategy? Let us know in the comments below.

-Greg

Tweet-stimonials Let Your Fans Tell Your Story

Posted on 09 March 2010 by gregrollett

Last week I talked about some of the ways to use Twitter and some of the ways not to (like Turning Twitter Into Myspace). The post got a strong reaction on, none other than, Twitter.

picture-7

Last week I also stumbled upon a really sweet plugin to showcase the things your fans are saying about you on Twitter. It is very simple and can really boost the social proof of your music. By showing that other people are talking positively about your music, you will attract and gain the trust of others that are coming to check out your music.

The plugin is called Tweet-stimonials (#twtmnls) and was developed by Jeff Sarris. It works right in your WordPress sidebar and I’ll show you how it works right here in a few easy steps.

Step 1

First, the plugin works with an extremely underused feature of Twitter – favorites. So, step one is to favorite Tweets you want to display on your site.

favorite-a-tweet

So, go and favorite a few Tweets. You can look in your @ replies, or do some custom searches for your songs, albums or artist names if different from your Twitter handle.

Step 2

Next is to go ahead and install the plug-in. Pretty standard stuff here for those using WordPress.

Step 3

Configure it to work with your site.

Step 4

Check out your site and all the cool stuff that people are saying about you.

More About Tweet-stimonials

From the Tweet-stimonials Website:

Be sure to watch Laura’s original video presentation regarding this concept, but the idea is as follows.

Twitter has a built-in function for flagging your favorite tweets; something that, from what I can tell, isn’t used by too many people. Well Laura Roeder presents the idea of using that same function to “favorite” all of those good things that your customers are already saying about you.

By marking these tweets as favorites, you are then able to automatically publish them to your site, making for one of the easiest and fastest ways to publish testimonials. As soon as you mark a new tweet as a favorite, it show up on your site. It’s that easy.

Laura provides excellent step-by-step instruction in her video for connecting this feed to your website, however I wanted a bit more flexibility in styling so I developed this CSS friendly plugin (with Twitter avatars) and called it Tweet-stimonials.

How Musicians Can Use It

As an artist it is really important to use social proof elements surrounding your music and your culture. Your goal in showcasing Tweet-stimonials is generally the same when soliciting testimonials from other bands, venues, producers, fans and other pivitol players in your music business.

Marketing in general becomes much easier when others are saying good things about you. Think about restaurants. When people want to discover a new restaurant, they typically ask their friends, family or co-workers and go based on their recommendations.

Same for new music. We disover new music in a very social way. Talking with friends, listening to music at a party, club, venue or radion. Getting a 3rd party to say that you are awesome helps to validate your own claims.

With this plug-in you have the capability to take someone’s comments about your art and showcase that in a very clean and not so “in your face” way.

Go Install And Report Back

I want to encourage you to go out and take advantage of this plugin. If you are using WordPress, install the plugin, go favorite some Tweets that say your music rocks, or is dope or whatever and report the link in the comments below. I will feature you in an upcoming post and/or report on WordPress For Musicians (I might have a new something, something coming out for musicians and WordPress, wink, wink).

It wil be some cool exposure for your music and more importantly will deliver some social proof to your existing site which will result in increased mailing list signups, more social engagement and hopefully more music sales.

-Greg