Online Music Marketing and Artist Promotion

I keep hearing about musicians who have hooked up with retailers as part of a promotion that the retailer is running. This practice is becoming more and more widely utilized among musicians. Recently Bealls Department Stores hooked up with Fabian Hernandez, a former Bealls model to play in stores while people shop. Retailer / musician relationships are not necessarily new. Big name musicians hook up with big retailers all the time to promote their products. Of course musicians have licensed their music to retailers for a particular ad campaign in the past (this was referred to among  musicians as selling out for a long time). Here’s the thing, now you can’t entirely count on CD sales to propel you into riches or even into a comfortable financial position in life. Your audience wants your music for free! That’s what most people are used to at this point. I am not going to bother with the argument about whether this is right or wrong, but I will say that it can be lucrative to go with the flow.

While it used to be considered selling out to license your music to a retailer for use in an ad campaign it doesn’t seem to be anymore. I was listening to NPR the other morning about a company called Agoraphone who provide a service putting music into radio and television ads. This is becoming such a popular revenue stream for musicians that now many will record an instrumental version of a song that is advertiser ready while they are in the studio recording the rest of their album. This reminds me of one of Chris Anderson’s “FREE” models in his newest book entitled FREE. This is the “dump the cost on the advertiser” model. It is the revised dump the cost on the retailer model to be sure. A good example of the old version was radio. You listen to the music and pay nothing but you have to listen to the ads between songs which the advertisers pay dearly for. This new model goes something like this. Your fans download your music for free and you turn around and utilize the notoriety that you’ve gained from giving your music away to land yourself a gig with a retailer who will pay you well for increased exposure for their product.

I have seen this type of musician / retailer relationship elsewhere also. I live about 10 minutes from LL Bean in Freeport Maine. LL Bean puts on a summer concert series every year where they put on a concert in a lawn area right outside their flagship store. Sometimes they have some big names playing and the entire town of Freeport gets even more flooded with people than it already was. Last year Keb Mo was in the series and this year Blues Traveler and The Wallflowers. This is really nice for the residents of the area because the concert is free. We all enjoy the opportunity to see these concerts (even if it isn’t a big name performer) free of charge. But you should see the LL Bean store after the show (LL Bean is open 24 hours so they are able to serve the mad rush of people who all-of-a-sudden decided they needed to buy a fleece at 11:00 at night). This works out well for everyone involved.

After hearing about so many of these relationships popping up, sometimes involving little known artists, I started thinking… Would it not be possible if you are an Independent Musician with a good local following, to perform in a local retailer’s shop one day and draw a bunch of customers into the store and why wouldn’t the store want to pay you for that increased exposure. You would be able to treat it like another gig and a good opportunity to connect with your fans, your fans would enjoy a free concert and the retailer would have a packed store for a day. Everybody wins.

Overall I would encourage you to get creative and try something that not everyone tries. Putamayo developed a small empire marketing their world music compilations in book stores and boutique shops around the country. I would also think that you would have a more captive audience. Think about this… Most people aren’t expecting to hear live music while they are shopping. You would think that they are more likely to notice what you are playing if they weren’t expecting to hear it in the first place. As opposed to the local pub where they expect to hear music and therefore don’t notice it as readily.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – I have a newsletter especially for musicians to keep you posted on the latest products and services available on the internet. Visit www.onlineartistpromotion.com and recieve a free report full of usefull tricks and tips on maintaining an email subscriber list, how to make a music business plan, sales copy tips for musicians, and more. I look forward to connecting with you in the newsletter, Thank You!