Viral Marketing For Musicians and Bands

Question: How can we get our fans to encourage their friends to come to our shows, or even listen to our music?

Answer: The term “viral marketing” is being thrown around the music industry and for very good reason, it’s one of the most effective ways of building your audience!

Built-in Trust Factor
When friends tell friends about something that they like, a buzz begins. They usually trust each other with information about new things that each discover and music is no different from a great burger place, a great tv show, or movie. The fact that a friend says, “you should listen to this band” makes it a lot more likely that you’ll want to listen to a new band rather than, “Hey! You should listen to our music!” (coming directly from the band through their marketing). This is often how people find out about new music. Matter of fact, viral marketing (word-of-mouth) is one of the main ways we hear about “great things”. When you think about how much advertising of poor products are directed out you daily, it’s no wonder the trust-factor simply does not exist when we initally hear about something new coming from the mouth of the advertiser (in your case, you, or your band). This is why it is so important that you enourage positive word-of-mouth and do your best to stop bad word-of-mouth. Make sure that you always do things in an honest way…it’s that powerful!

Guerilla Marketing for Musicians
Marketing yourself by viral, or word-of-mouth means, is inexpensive because it is usually so easy to implement. Doing the right thing (integrity) and going out of your way to make your fans’ experience with you amazing, while creating great music, will ensure that your fans help spread the word about you and your band!

Make Your Music Viral
Here are some great ways to get word-of-mouth circulating about you and your music:

Post videos of your band on YouTube.
Get your music on MySpace and other social networking sites.
Include a “forward this to a friend” link on your site and email communications.
Encourage your fans to bring their friends to your next show!
Offer two-for-one deals on ticket sales.

Guerrilla Music Marketing Suggestions

Make Fans a Birthday Card! 
Remember your fan’s birthdays by creating a musical birthday card you create yourself. Email them the card that is imbedded with an mp3 file of a birthday song you wrote. 

Use old school psychology, (if you can afford it) send a real birthday card to each fan that has a simple chip attached to it with a sound file that begins to play when you open the card. (the technology is now available, such cards are now in many retail stores).

You will obviously have to have your database setup to include a place for your fans to give you their birth dates, but after that, at the beginning of every month simply sort out who has a birthday coming up and mail them off. Be sure to do this at least a week before the beginning of each month. 

Think of how appreciative your fans will be for having been thought of, and as your career and goes on and gets more established, your past musical birthday cards will become valuable collector items.

A Sticky Way To Be Remembered 
Print up promotional “sticky notes” using the Post-It note method for upcoming gigs and send or pass them out to music fans attending live shows. Have your latest shows printed up on them, so fans can use them as reminders to attend your shows and can put them up on their home bulletin boards or refrigerators. You can also use this idea for reminders to buy your latest CD or merchandise you have for sale at your website or live shows.

Be The Musical Entertainment 
For Your Favorite Local Record Store
Work with a local record store that carries your genre of music and ask them about participating in a special “after hours” party and special sale where you get to be the band or artist to supply the music for the event. Have them put your CD on sale at a special price during the party only. Take time to sign autographs, and get the customers to sign up on your mailing/database list. The store can add whatever added incentives they want to make the event a special sale and you get to go along for the ride.

How the Music Industry’s Transformation Is Paving the Way for Monetization Opportunities

Fundamental changes in the music industry are paving the way for future monetization opportunities.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff called it a “catfight between two rich companies” on November 1, when the controversial multibillion dollar lawsuit filed by Terra Firma Capital Ltd., and its chairman Guy Hands, against Citigroup Inc. (C) and its banker David Wormsley was finally brought to a conclusive end. Rejecting Hands’ claim that Wormsley had deceived him into overpaying for EMI’s acquisition, the jury in New York has thwarted Hands’ futile attempts in holding on to EMI. Now, Citigroup will have no problem in breaking apart the British music giant and selling it off in pieces, since it had initially provided over $4.8 billion in loans to finance the acquisition of EMI by Terra Firma.

Several analysts have said that the case has simply been Guy’s last attempt at getting his own hands out of a poor business deal. Recently, negotiations between Citigroup and Hands on restructuring EMI’s finances had been underway – a deal which will clearly be swept to the wayside now that the lawsuit has come to an end. With losses totaling more than U.S. $800 million in the year that ended March 2010, EMI had evidently not been performing nearly as well as its other music industry brothers such as Sony Music Entertainment (SNE) and Warner Music Group (WMG). With cost cuts instituted by Hands leading to the accelerated departure of EMI’s top talent, such as Queen, Paul McCartney, and the Rolling Stones, EMI continues to have a difficult time in achieving previous levels of profitability, especially when it remains particularly vulnerable to global trends that continue to leech revenues away from the music industry.

Music Digitalization and its Challenges

Although EMI may have been hit the hardest as of late, the other giants of the “big four” in the recorded music business are likely to face the same challenges in the wake of vast changes in the industry. Technological innovation has brought an insurmountable degree of change to the music business, change that presents both opportunities and threats to its future economic outlook. Although new opportunities have rapidly evolved alongside innovations of digital distribution channels, such ingenuity has not resulted in proportional market growth. The global music market has declined a staggering 30% from 2004 to 2009, despite digital sales having increased a total of 940%, accounting for more than a quarter of record companies’ revenues for the first time in history in 2009. Evidently, although digital sales of music have experienced unprecedented growth during the last decade, such growth has not offset the sharp decline in sales of physical formats. Imperative for the future growth of the music industry is the realization that music consumption will continue to ebb away from the physical world and into the digital realm, as seen by statistics provided by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). Therefore, seeking monetization opportunities of digital music consumption will be fundamental for the survival of the music industry in the future.