Photo by Andra Veraart
Trent Reznor on NIN’s fan forum:
If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:
Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.
If you’re forging your own path, read on.
Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.
To clarify: Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this:
- Give your music away as high-quality, DRM-free MP3s
- Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers
- Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods
- Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell
- Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan
- Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase
- Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters… whatever
[...]
Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately. The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact — it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).
Our “platform” has nothing on Topspin — we’re essentially putting on a show, producing live recordings and media while using a blog for promotions & Facebook and Google to track interest in what we’re doing and to build community. And the artists we put on range from pseudo savvy to Luddites when it comes to leveraging the web as a distribution and promotional tool.
None of that negates the truth in what Reznor is saying.
I’m still waiting for the day that Topspin has a ubiquitous, easily customizable distribution, fulfillment & promotions platform that the average artist can use at a reduced price point or for free. Until then, we’ll continue to advise the artists we work with to fully release albums to Last.fm and to the upside down community pricing structure of Amie Street, where people can sample new music at a low cost with the profits going straight to the artist.
(story found on KOAR)
Whatcha Think?