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MUSIC BIZ INSIGHT #35 Power Reading for Busy Music Professionals Hope you're hungry! MUSIC BIZ INSIGHT is published for musicians, songwriters, managers, label reps, booking agents, entertainment attorneys, studio owners, music publishers, and all others involved in the music business. Its purpose is to help boost your business, find new markets, make the right connections, develop professionally, work smarter and improve your bottom line. "As a general rule, the most successful people in life are those who have the best information." Benjamin Disraeli Written and published bimonthly by Peter Spellman, Director of MUSIC BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: Turning Music Business Data into Useful Knowledge. Career-building books, articles, training, consulting and more. P.O. Box 230266, Astor Station, Boston, MA 02123-0266, USA Phone: 888-655-8335 Email: success@mbsolutions.com Web site: http://www.mbsolutions.com © 1997 - 2003, Peter Spellman, MBS Business Media, www.mbsolutions.com Please feel free to redistribute with above credit and copyright notice.
BAD-ASS CLASSICS When Melissa Fathman of Lincoln Center asked a bunch of New York teens whether chamber music was dead, she was enlightened by their answer, as reported by Greg Sandow in The Wall Street Journal. No, they said, chamber music isn't dead. It is just exclusionary, boring, expensive and elderly. Hmm, okay. Well, how about a concert featuring a cool quartet playing "music written right now"? Great idea, said the teens, who "chose Ethel, a string quartet famous in New York for adventure, precision and drop-dead excitement." The deal was that the teens would have to produce the event, including selling tickets. Lincoln Center would provide the venue. As it happened, a 45-member choir from George Washington Carver High School of Montgomery, Alabama, happened to be passing through New York City on May 9th, the day of the event. Carla Scruggs, "a federal programs assistant at Carver," looking for "an experience they hadn't had" decided to buy a block of tickets for the choir. When the curtain went up, the audience was not only nearly 100 percent teenaged, but 50 percent African-American. Ethel opened with a number by John King, called "Shuffle," featuring "a heavy blues vibe." It wasn't actually blues, Sandow explains, "but it was played with the blues, more or less the way Haydn, back in the 18th Century, played with the minuet." The other pieces, "had a taste of pop somewhere in their sound or rhythm...All were genuine chamber music, written with advanced contemporary classical techniques, which made them miles too smart and tough to be real pop -- and also too gritty and dissonant... to go down well with a normal classical audience." Midway through the hour-long event, the choir got up and sang. By the end, the audience was on its "feet and screaming, Alabama and New York kids alike." For one brief, shining hour, "Ethel and the teens created a world in which classical music had never grown distant, a world in which it was as fresh and direct as crowds dancing in the street." STUDY SHOWS IMPROVED VISUAL PERCEPTION FROM VIDEO GAMES A study conducted at the University of Rochester indicates that playing high-action video games can increase a person's performance on a range of visual tests. The tests included locating the position of a blinking object, counting simultaneous objects on a screen, and identifying the color of an alphabet letter. In the study, subjects who spent several months regularly playing action video games consistently performed better on the tests than those who did not play the games. The study did not address the question of how violence in video games influences those who play them. The authors of the study said the results suggest that such video games could be beneficial to people with visual impairments or to soldiers training for combat. Military experts confirmed the latter notion, saying that soldiers who have spent many years playing action video games are often better at certain combat skills, such as operating long-range unmanned aerial vehicles. Wall Street Journal, 28 May 2003. MICROTONAL MUSIC It "uses new sounds to create new musical emotions that never existed before," says microtonalist John Schneider, explaining his passion for a genre that plays "between the keys" of conventional music, as reported by Brett Campbell in The Wall Street Journal. Microtonal music actually is nothing new -- Bach used microtones and it is the basis of traditional Indian music, as well as vocal music in Arabia and Africa. It was relegated to obscurity largely thanks to the mass production of musical instruments in the 19th Century, which made necessary "a standardized tuning system called 'equal temperament'...in which the distance between any given pair of notes was roughly the same no matter what octave they were played in." The standard tunings also made it easier to combine instruments in an orchestra. But what some enjoyed as a convenience, others despised as a limitation. The modern-day microtonal movement actually has its roots in the Great Depression, when "California maverick composer Harry Partch began building his unique 43-tones-per-octave instruments," which gave him many more options: "As Partch said, an artist has five shades of red, so why should composers have only one C Sharp?" Partch wrote a book about microtonal music in 1949 that was read by a composer named Lou Harrison, who proceeded to microtune his piano and compose music for "keyboards, harp, gamelan and instruments he built himself." Microtonal instruments tend to be of the stringed variety, because it is much harder to re-tune wind instruments. However, computers and synthesizers today make "it possible for composers to write in any tuning they wish without having to construct or retune a whole set of instruments." Microtonalist Bill Alves, for example, recently created a "digital realization of Harrison's landmark 1955 'Simfony in Free Style.' It actually was the first time the piece had been performed because previously it wasn't possible to find either the musicians or the instruments to play it. Alves also is the organizer of Microfest 2003, a series of microtonal performances in the L.A. area with three dates remaining, on May 23, 24 and 25. One must hear it to appreciate it, no doubt. As Campbell writes it: "After prolonged exposure to the rich, kaleidoscopic world of microtones, returning to equal-tempered music was for me like going back to black and white after spending a weekend immersed in color." PURPLE COW That's the name of the new book (out last month) by Seth "Permission Marketing" Godin, and it is all about remarkable companies and individuals. "When I say remarkable," he writes, "I don't mean curious or interesting or just weird or wacko. I mean....worth recommending. Not that everyone would recommend it. Just that a special community of people would recommend it to others in their community..." Purple Cow , writes Seth, is "a manifesto about the death of the TV-industrial complex and the rise of truly amazing products, which market themselves with ideaviruses, sneezers and hives. The challenge of the book is this: Stop trying to slap marketing onto something after it's done. You need to build the marketing into the product experience itself, or you'll never find the time or money it takes to make your offering successful". Seth wrote all of that (and more) in an introduction to an eBook, called 99 Cows, also out last month. He says he wrote the eBook, which features short profiles of 99 "remarkable" companies and individuals, "to help readers of Purple Cow see what I mean when I talk about going to the edges...to create a product worth talking about." He also wrote 99 Cows as the best possible example of a Purple Cow. He writes: "I'm maniacal in my goal of getting you to buy many copies of the hardcover and give them to your friends. Hence this eBook. Easy to forward by email. Cheap. Hopefully, you'll find ten or twenty or a hundred colleagues who need to hear about how remarkable can make a difference. And maybe, just maybe, they'll pony up a few bucks and buy the real book. THE MP3 ECONOMY Check out this article on the Business 2.0 site (www.business2.com). It details how the dollar is divvied up among parties in the new music economy (not too different from the old music economy - alas!). Thanks to "Mi Amigo" for sending this along. ))) ILLUMINATING TRIVIA - Did you know?... The Beatles' lawsuit against Capitol-EMI concerning underpaid royalties took a total of SEVENTEEN YEARS (1972-1989) to finally settle ? The Beatles "won". Source: They Fought the Law: Rock Music Goes to Court by Stan Soocher (Schirmer Books). ))) FEATURE: MARKETING MUSIC IN THE INTERNET AGE - INTERVIEW WITH LUCY BEER OF ELEMENTAL CONSULTING I first noticed the NAME of this company and became intrigued. Then I noticed it focused on internet music marketing and so I had to make contact. Elemental Consulting provides online marketing services to labels, artists and entertainment companies. Lucy Beer, who graciously answered the following questions, founded the company in 2001. I thought her insights would prove helpful to us as we work to make sense using the Net in our own business and career development. Hope you enjoy it. -PS MBS: Lucy, can you tell me about your own background and how you came to be CEO of Elemental Consulting? LB: I've been involved in the music industry since I first moved to the States about 4 1/2 years ago. I started out interning at an indie label and from there I began learning my way round the industry. I've worked at labels as well as at music-related dotcoms. It was through working at some start-up music dotcoms (none of which are around today) that I first got the internet bug. I realized I really liked the combination of music with internet. While working for another small internet marketing company I learned the ropes of online marketing and from there I launched my own company, Elemental Consulting. Its been around for about 1 1/2 years now. After the dotcom bubble burst I wanted to start my own business so that I could have a firmer grasp on my own destiny. As a business you are obviously dependent on outside sources of income, and circumstance, but, as far as possible, if my company is going to sink or swim, its going to be because of the decisions I personally make. MBS: What kinds of services does Elemental provide? LB: Elemental Consulting provides online marketing services to record labels, artists and entertainment companies. I like to look at what we provide as containing many of the same elements of any offline marketing campaign - but applied to the internet; i.e. pr, retail, radio, grassroots/viral, giveaway promotions, lifestyle promotions, 3rd party marketing/sponsorships. We aim to replicate all these aspects in the online environment. MBS: Does Elemental focus on any specific music styles? (If yes,) Why these? LB: We've worked with music across the board, from jazz to country to soul, urban and electronic. As long as its good music, and we feel there is a market for it, we'll consider working it. Recently we have been focusing on hip-hop and electronic music and ideally that is the direction I'd like to keep moving in, mostly because that is my own area of personal preference and knowledge. We'll take on projects outside of that if we feel it is a quality project that we can do an effective campaign with. MBS: Can you describe a recent music marketing campaign Elemental was involved in and what some of the outcomes were? LB: A recent campaign would be the marketing of Akrobatik's "Balance" CD. This was released in May on Coup D'Etat - an indie hip-hop label in New York. It is Akrobatik's debut full length album, but he had established an underground following through various single releases. The great thing about this album is that musically, its very solid and that's always a great starting point. We got a lot of exposure for this release on a number of hip-hop and entertainment sites. For example, so far, more than 16 sites have reviewed the album, ranging from PopMatters.com to ArtofRhyme.com. Tracks are being played on internet radio, from AOL/Netscape and Rhapsody, to The Bassment Online (hiphop) Radio. We set up a listening party at Real.com, downloads are available at Artistdirect, Sohh, hiphopdx (2 of the biggest and most popular hiphop sites). We created an artist page at mp3.com, gained feature placement at the site and so far have received over 2200 hundred downloads. We set up interview features with about 10 sites as well as a pre-order/gift-with-purchase campaign at the top online hip-hop retailer. On a grassroots level, we raised awareness about the release of the album and found that many people were anticipating its release, and gathered valuable feedback. The grassroots marketing is a sensitive process and we take a more organic approach rather than spamming messagebaords. All in all the campaign was very successful in raising awareness of the release and gaining exposure on a variety of sites. The effects of any campaign always extend far beyond the amount of time we work a project. Reviews and other features will continue to come in for weeks after a campaign ends. MBS: Today's music industry is obviously passing through a lot of changes. What's your take on the state of the biz today? (feel free to offer a global perspective, followed by a U.S. one, and then even a genre-oriented one, if that's relevant) LB: Globally its hard for me to say, because I think that each country has its own quirks in the marketplace. But I do think that global marketing is easier with the internet because you have the ability to reach a huge online population regardless of geography and I think that only helps artists. The US industry is obviously having a tough time at the moment. Its going through a period of adjustment and the shakeout remains to be seen. Labels are still struggling with the downloading and file-sharing situation and I find a dichotomy in how labels have responded. Some are trying to capitalize on it and work with all the new technologies - indie artists are also doing this. Whereas other labels are still trying to fight it - but I think they are fighting a losing battle. The hip-hop and electronic communities are ahead of the curve and are generally early adopters very familiar with all the latest ways to get new tracks and new music - messageboards are buzzing with people's opinions on various tracks and people are actively swapping music. Other genre-based communities, such as country fans are somewhat slower to adopt these trends, but are still very active online. MBS: What is your vision for the future as far as recorded music is concerned? LB: I'm a huge fan of the tangible format of music. Age-wise, my generation really has lived through and been the guinea pigs of the transition to digital formats, and has been actively involved in it, so maybe I'm a little old fashioned - but I'll always love the feeling of bringing home a new piece of vinyl or a CD, unwrapping it, going through the liner notes etc. And I think a lot of people still feel this way. I think that digital formats, because they are intangible, are perceived to have less value, especially by the next generation, and that is where the real battle lies - in either finding a way to make the tangible have real value for these kids, or finding a way to make the intangible profitable. Quality of music has a lot to do with it and i think labels have helped devalue tangible products by focusing solely on commercial rather than artistic value. Labels are making the music disposable, and the public has noticed this and is rebelling against it. Hence the filesharing. Bootlegging has been, and always will be a problem - whether its downloading, or selling CDRs on the street corner and people will always look for ways to get something for free, especially if they perceive it to be not worth spending their hard-earned cash on. Having said that, I don't think tangible formats are going to become obsolete. I think profit margins are becoming narrower and companies, especially large ones are trying to react to that. But I do think the majority of people will continue to pay for most of their music. MBS: If you had to summarize the most important guidelines for marketing music today, what would they be? LB: This is a difficult question! In my experience, you have to look to the latest trends and advances and find a way to work with them, and don't try and fight it. Everything is going to end up on the P2P networks whether you like it or not, so be prepared to use it to your advantage. We typically work with niche genres and communities, and for these audiences, quality is still hugely important - the bottom line is that if the music is good, people will look for it, and talk about it. MBS: Can you talk a bit about the commercial potential of "niche" music markets in light of the changing marketing climate out there? (hope that's not too vague). LB: I think once you talk about the commercial potential of a 'niche' market, you are already beginning the process to making that 'niche' mainstream and packaging it as such. At that point the 'niche' music becomes absorbed into 'pop' and it becomes little more than a marketing tool selling a 'lifestyle' and an attitude. That's pretty much what has happened, for example, to hip-hop - now the top of the charts is dominated by huge selling rap artists. At a time when the industry is bemoaning downloads and piracy, 50 cent is selling hundreds of thousands units a week. At the same time, when that commercialization happens in any musical genre, you will always have the underground; the anti-commercial faction whose motivation is still relatively pure, and whose proponents are still innovating. That's the type of niche client/company I like to work with. I think there is some money to be made by those underground artists/companies as long as they find their niche audience and market to them in an authentic and organic way- in fact its less marketing, and more just effective communication with the audience. But the profit margins are still fairly slim, so artists and labels have to be smart financially in order to make it work. On a personal level, I definitely relate more to the 'underground' than the mainstream, so I am never looking to exploit people in order to sell them music. But I think its clear that a lot of companies do try and align themselves with niche markets and audiences in order to gain some credibility. Look at the way Sprite has made themselves 'cool' by using hip-hop, or the way cars are sold with electronic music. I can't say I condone it because when it really comes down to it, I'm a music fan who happens to [know how to] market music - not a marketer who happens to like music. So I guess my point is that on a larger level, big brands (products and/or labels) are definitely looking to market their wares to 'niche' audiences because they have already saturated the mainstream. But it is not the goal of my company to assist that process on behalf of huge brands and labels. We are definitely more indie-centric. MBS: Marketing involves so many components and so much WORK. What advice can you offer to the self-promoting musicians and music businesses out there for making this work more efficient and effective (tech tools, best marketing practices, etc.)? LB: Firstly, they have to realize that it IS work....it does take time and effort, and above all, consistent work and effort, in order to reach your audience and carve out a niche. Secondly, have realistic expectations and be realistic about the quality of your product. Try and see yourself as a business as well as an artist. Know that you can't always do everything yourself. If you are lacking knowledge in a particular area, look to someone else to fill in the gap, whether its a friend, or a professional that you have to pay for. Email is probably one of the most powerful marketing methods, and its important to be organized. Use Act or similar software to organize your contacts. Keep your mailing list organized so that you can easily blast messages out to it. If necessary, use one of the various list management software to assist you (Bcentral etc) Your website is very important - keep it easy to navigate and clean in design. Keep your consumer in mind and make sure they can get all the information they need easily. And don't forget to make it easy for a visitor to sign up for your email newsletter/updates. This is a prime opportunity to collect email addresses for your database and I'm still amazed by how many people are not taking advantage of this. MBS: What are some of the most interesting approaches, tactics, etc. you've noted that individuals or companies are taking to market and promote music today? LB: Coup D'Etat, the label I mentioned earlier is pretty forward thinking in their approach. They recently launched a contest to win an iPod, fully loaded with their entire catalog. This is a bold move in an atmosphere when sometimes its hard to get a label to give permission to use one track for a promotional download. I heard Nettwerk was doing something cool along the lines of street team members handing out what was essentially liner notes for a CD that you could make yourself at home by going to their website and downloading the various tracks they made available. MBS: Finally, why did you choose "Elemental Consulting" as the name of your company? LB: I stumbled upon it really. I was brainstorming and coming up with various words and concepts I liked. When I hit on Elemental, it struck a chord with me. There are multiple meanings of the word, all of which I like. It has to with fundamentals, or basics - and I think the approach of the company is about fundamentals - we're not about trying to confuse you with new media jargon, or overstate the things we will do. We focus on the essentials, which is helping you reach your audience. Because we take various approaches to a campaign and use a variety of methods, I see those as different elements, combining to create a cohesive strategy. I used the word consulting instead of 'marketing' or something more specific because I see the company growing and providing a variety of services, so I wanted the name to be all-encompassing and to leave room for that growth. Thanks Lucy! ))) THE BOTTOM LINE: $$$-SAVERS FOR THE SMALL BUSINESS The six most important words you can say to your customers are: "How did you hear about us?" Their answers will guide you in determining how effective your marketing has been, and where you should invest your future marketing dollars. When you're faced with a project requiring extensive retyping of photocopied or faxed material, consider using scanners and OCR (optical character recognition) software. The combination of these two technologies can save you countless hours of keyboarding. TO SUBSCRIBE to MUSIC BIZ INSIGHT: send email with the message in the body, "subscribe" to success@mbsolutions.com It's not an autoresponder so feel free to include any other comments, ideas, suggestions, etc. you may have. About the PublisherPETER SPELLMAN is Director of MUSIC BUSINESS SOLUTIONS, a business and marketing consultancy to the music industry, and Director of Career Development at Berklee College of Music, Boston. He is the author of several books for music entrepreneurs and teaches music industry courses at Northeastern University (Boston) and the University of Massachusetts (Lowell). A musician since he was ten, Peter continues to spin riddims in the improvisational collective, Friend Planet and sing Cat Stevens' songs to his kids every night before bed. BLOOM WHERE YOU'RE PLANTED! Quote of the Month-- "Whatever you believe you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic to it."
Written and published bimonthly by Peter Spellman, Director of MUSIC BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: Turning Music Business Data into Useful Knowledge. Career-building books, articles, training, consulting and more. P.O. Box 230266, Astor Station, Boston, MA 02123-0266, USA Phone: 888-655-8335 Email: success@mbsolutions.com Web site: http://www.mbsolutions.com © 1997 - 2003, Peter Spellman, MBS Business Media, www.mbsolutions.com Please feel free to redistribute with above credit and copyright notice.
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