Market Your Music on College Campuses
Yes, I retract what I said earlier. Indie Musicians the Internet is over saturated with marketing and it is time market more offline. Continue To Sell Your Music Online!! I cannot emphasize this enough. However, market your music more offline. Why?
People are becoming desensitized to Internet marketing. People now use a Google more for research than a first point of discovery. For example, you hear that a company is hiring from a friend, so you Google them to learn more about the company. Your first point of contact was your friend, you used Google for research. This is how most people interact with Google. Google knows this, that is why there are no ads on Google.com.
People are sick of all the Internet advertisements, therefore they’re skipping them. Everywhere you turn online somebody is trying to sell you something. Aren’t you sick of it? Yes. The other side is that major companies are hogging all the good ad space. Why? They can afford to pay top dollar for the best ad placement. Prime examples of this is are MySpace and Yahoo. No real indie artists can afford to buy ad space on those sites unless they inherited a seizable estate.
College Campuses & High Schools
Many of you don’t know where to start. You’re on a limited budget and you want to hit as many people as possible. College campuses are your best choice. You can target thousands on students at a time in one location. High Schools are your second choice, but you have the hurdle of the school board and principal to get around. Jill Scott started as an indie artist on a small unknown indie label. At the time the label owner did heavy marketing of Jill Scott on college campuses and college radio. The rest is history and Jill Scott eventually crossed into more mainstream markets and commercial radio. Her record label, Hidden Beach Records, is still classified as indie but picked up major distribution with other companies.
Be Unconventional
If you’re conventional and traditional, you won’t stand out. Try to think of things nobody has done. Over ten years ago one man went to local high schools and middle schools and handed out key chains of his rap group with the phone number of the radio station so they could call and request their music. Soon the song “Tootsee Roll” by 69 Boyz became a hit. Please note, if you’re going for the teeny bopper audience with a song like “Tootsee Roll”, success will probably be short lived (i.e. 69 Boyz). However, if you’re a an indie artist who wants a long term future, go the college campus marketing route like Jill Scott. Jill Scott’s fans are loyal and deep like her. Artists tend to attract who and what they are. Compare Soulja Boy fans to Jill Scott fans, huge difference.
Bottome Line
Be fearless, aggressive and unconventional in 2009. Happy New Year!!
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Filed under: How Independent Music Producers Market Music, How To Market Your Music, Marketing Music, Promoting Music, Sell Your Music, Yahoo, indie music sales | Tagged: 69 Boyz, 69 Boyz Tootsee Roll, Hidden Beach Records Indie Music Label, Hot Indie Music, Hot Indie Music World, How Hidden Beach Records Markets Music, How To Market an Indie Music Label, How To Market Indie Music, how to market our music, Jamille Luney, Jamille Luney Music Analyst, Jill Scott music marketing, Marketing Indie Music Offline, Marketing Indie Music Online, marketing music offline, marketing music online, Marketing your music, MySpace Does Not Give Ad Space to Indie Artists, Unconventional Music Market, Unconventional Music Marketing, Yahoo Does Not Give Ad Space to Indie Music
Yep a healthy combination of online and offline marketing will drive your bottom line, it is also essential to build a tribe to do the leg work, you can push yourself/product til your blue in the face, maybe even score a sale, but when you have a tribe exhalting your greatness the crowd mentality kicks in and then everybody’s want some.
GUIDO’s SOUND ADVICE
So true. The internet is the great enabler, but your own social sphere is who you trust. My question is … does that make it easier or harder than it used to be in the pre-internet world?