Music Presentation at Soundtopia Part 1
Cats: Music Culture, Music Production, Music Promotion, studio 2.0|
By James Pew
On Thursday Nov. 13 at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, I presented at a Soundtopia workshop, to students who are pursuing music careers in addition to their fields of study.
Part 1
Ideas on how artists can use the web to market themselves, develop a personal brand, and build community around their music, is the general direction of my talk today.
For additional information and a broader explanation of the areas discussed, a takeaway page has been created to help you dig deeper into any of the areas I’ll be touching on. And as always, I will continuing writing about these topics at studiomanifesto.ca. Lets Begin.
Web 2.0 is the buzz term most commonly used to describe a wide variety of popular tools and concepts that artists can utilize for effective online marketing and brand building.
The Studio Manifesto community aims to empower musicians so that they are better prepared to produce and effectively promote their music. And better prepared to work with music companies like ours. Studio Manifesto also gives us the opportunity to raise awareness of issues we feel are important to the culture of music. Studio Manifesto is what ties everything together, and as I’ll attempt to show today, and artists online community can do the same for their music business.
The work I have been doing with recording artists has led me to see first hand the impact of the democratization of digital tools, and to the belief that it is possible to produce and market your music with inspired artistry and professional quality because of the ease and ubiquity of new digital tools.
It is within every musicians means to aim for the highest quality of sound and digital media presentation that a growing base of intelligent users are demanding.
The following slide shows a few examples of where these intelligent users are hanging out, discussing, and recommending music.
I say “intelligent user“, others refer to them as “the people formerly known as consumers“. They are intelligent because generations of them have been growing up immersed in digital culture.
Many of the potential fans of your music are these “Intelligent Users“.
One important aspect of the web is RSS. For those unfamiliar here is a quick explanation:
RSS brings websites to the user, who would otherwise have to chase the website. – Keith O’Brien, PR Week
RSS – started as Rich Site Summary – but Really Simple Syndication is now widely used to describe it.
An RSS feed, or syndication feed, is what you are getting when you subscribe to a blog, podcast, show calendar, photostream, etc.
It is also what drives many of the functions on social media platforms, like the mini-feed on facebook for example.
When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, all new updates or posts, automatically go to their feed reader. The user knows that something on the site has been updated without having to actually navigate to the site.
Most people use RSS feeds in conjunction with a feed reader, like google reader, that allows you to organize your feeds with folders and tags, and even install third party apps like the AideRSS Post Rank filtering app.
Check out my post Filtering the Web – Custom Aggregation Constructs for a geeky technical explanation. Watch the video below for a simple illustration of the new and easy way people are using RSS to navigate the web.
The Tokyo Police Club’s website aims to build community. They have a Blog, with posts written by the band, and a forum. Fans can subscribe to their news feed, blog, and show calendar.
Trent Reznor takes community building a step further by making tracks available for remixing, and encouraging fans to contribute and interact with content.
Trent Reznor has also surveyed his fans asking them important questions about how they interact with NIN content, what their favorite tracks are, what online portals do they use to discover and recommend music. Check out Trent Reznor’s Fan Survey.
Building community is about listening and engaging with people. Your web presence is not about you… it’s about your fans. Trent Reznor surveyed his fans to find out what he could do to make them happy.
I encourage you to analyze what other people in the music biz are doing on the web. But when it comes to your web identity, keep it unique. Don’t use templates. Having a similar structure or features as other websites is expected, but design & content should be original.
Read Social Media, Blogs and Music: Some Philosophical Thoughts by Dave Allen.
An artists input into their online community can simply be updating fans and friends on what the artist is doing or working on;
In the studio today recording drums.
Playing a show in Tokyo.
Writing a new song.
If you want to write about an issue unrelated to your music than go for it. You call the shots. Encourage feedback from the community and ask how they feel about the issue.
Invite your fans into your world and share with them as much detail as you are comfortable with.
Here are a few points that help us find topics to write about, and co-ordinate our online networking, marketing, communications, PR, and promotion on Studio Manifesto.
By keeping and eye on the issues important to us, and then writing about them on Studio Manifesto, we are engaging with the world in a way that only recently became so easy to do.
Maybe its because marketing is marketing regardless of what the product is, or maybe its because of the connection to music that a studio has with artists, but so much of the advice that we’ve put into practice for our business, has come from sources offering advice to musicians. The following slide provides a few excellent examples of blogs, and the people behind them, that provide priceless information and advice for people in the music business.
There are many non-music resources as well that offer knowledge and insight on a broad range of personal branding and marketing topics that can be used by anyone wishing to promote their business, including musicians. This thinking is what inspired a post on Studio Manifesto called Looking for Wisdom Beyond Music Resources. In that post every appearance of the word wisdom links to an outside blog post or article on a non-music centric marketing or personal branding topic that can be applied to an artists music business.
How do you survive in the music business when everything is free? Where does your music fit in a world of infinite niches? How can the web help connect you to fans? Part 2 and 3 will delve more deeply into broadband culture, the changing music business, and attempt to answer the question “where is the money?”
Here is a list of some of my social media profiles. People following me online get articles recommended through Friend Feed, Twitter, & Facebook. As well as Euphonic Sound session updates. They can listen to the Euphonic Podcast on iMeem, hear our favorite music on iLike, view our photo galleries on Flickr, hear new music that was produced at Euphonic Sound on the Euphonic website, where they can also comment on news updates and session pictures, and get information about promotions for indie bands.
Everything links to Studio Manifesto where you can read and comment on posts giving advice to indie artists and producers, download tracks for remix contests, or be linked to other blogs that write and discuss essential new music concepts.
Music Presentation at Soundtopia Part 1 by James Pew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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