Music Marketing in The Digital Age

I read an interesting article on Never Neutral the other day, via Twitter,  regarding the plight of artists and revenue streams in the digital age (which was born in response to an earlier piece written by Andrew Keen in the Telegraph). This topic is of course as contentious as they come – I doubt that there are many recording artists today that haven’t thought long and hard about how they’re going to transform a disc (or reel, or hard drive) full of recordings into a sustainable paycheck in this current climate.

The discourse that really struck me though was about artists promoting themselves across the digital medium. With greater frequency now do we hear of digital ‘success’ stories, in which an artist has promoted and marketed themselves in such an innovative fashion that it has captured the attentions of a large audience, which has then translated to a sharp increase in fanbase, packed out tours, and recorded music and merch sales. Ernesto brings the point sharply into focus that these stories are always about established artists, such as Trent Reznor, Radiohead et al. In his words; ‘the problem with using [these artists] as paradigms of the new digital cultural economy is a fundamental one: none of them started out and made their financial and artistic success in the digital economy’. This is of course very true. Many (considerably) lesser-known bands followed Radiohead’s example and offered their music on a pay-what-you-feel-zero-is-ok-too model without even a meagre percentage of the success of the multi-platinum selling band. The argument that you cannot expect this level of success without an already solid distribution model is a persuasive one.

So where does that leave the modern ‘digital native’ recording artist? Good question. Personally, I love stories of successful marketing campaigns across the digital medium, no matter how successful the artist. These successes are inspirational, because they always communicate such creativity and innovation – and really, dissemination and absorption of these two concepts is the backbone of the web (or, at least as far as my amateur-tech mind is concerned).

Success is always relative. Artists at the top of their game increasing their audience by 500,000 fans is on a similar scale as an unknown band attracting 5,000 new fans (then of course there’s quality of fan, which justifies a post of its own). This is an achievable goal with the following:

• A great song (first and foremost)
• A good understanding of your audience
• A well thought out and innovative concept
• A modest budget to action your plan

If an artist can nail the first three, they set themselves up for a far greater chance at success. The traditional label model is flailing, and we’re now seeing a greater level of independence for artists than ever before. To paraphrase Uncle Ben – ‘with great independence comes great responsibility’, artists should take some time to really define their audience, to work out exactly where they are found, and how best to reach them. From there, build a concept. How do you engage your audience? How do they interact with you and your ‘brand’? What will draw them in, and what will keep them there? What will encourage them to spread the word? All these points must be defined at the very beginning of the campaign if an artist is to market and promote themselves successfully in the digital economy.

Steve