Yeah just before you have a peek – you really must recognise the media power broadband is delivering into the hands of every day artists.
I’ve been researching into publicity (ie how to get artists radio play) and a lot of pundits are just saying forget it. Get your myspace (social networking) down, get your youtube (viral video marketing) down forget about radioplay and paying grands to publicists.
Sure, the digital environment is slowly destroying the retail value of music (please – don’t infer this is something I’m pessimistic about – 90% of sweet FA is still a lot better than a record deal where you end up having to pay them back because your album “only” sells a few thousand units!) but now it is making video making and sharing commonplace and putting the power to use video marketing in the hands of every indie artists and small entrepreneur.
Don’t worry – my kurb presentation videos are coming soon, we’re still building a shooting studio in our shed!
I’m just trying to throw up a blog here, but basically the uses to which video can be used to promote and advertise you, your music, who you are, and what your music really represents – and why people should make a connection with it – the newest and most powerful way of getting out there.
Hopefully you would have seen local Emo band False Start’s album launch video in my blogs showing how simple yet powerful interactivity can be in marketing music and entertainment.
A video you upload and link to/share/embed (through a blog – like this, or in a bulletin, comment, message etc.) doesn’t have to be a “music video” or a live clip or even an interview . . . it could be you talking, jamming, telling a story, baking a cake – a really effective technique is matching your music to some entertaining footage – a crazy cartoon or maybe some politicized news footage – and sharing that, so people have gotta ask . . . hey . . . I like that tune in the background! This is what happens when something goes “Viral”. This is what web 2.0 is all about. user driven content created by users and promoted by other users. Not big money labels spending multi millions so you can’t escape from Justin Timberlake and Beyonce.
All this of course is just the start. Once you add Kurb’s revolutionary next level online promtions packages, we put the marketing and sharing of your videos into overdrive. Videos or “mobisodes” or “Vblogs” are not only powerful direct marketing and branding exercises but – just like blogs – create additional search traffic – thats why optimizing your keywords, tags and most importantly all linked out with all your relevant links (your homesite, your itunes, your your myspace, your youtube, your bebo – you do have a bebo don’t you? in NZ Bebo isn’t just for kids anymore!) is SO important.
But not just on Youtube, Google, Myspace etc. – At Kurb we’re using over 20 sites to market videos including www… which not only has the highest resolution videos but is also leading the way with paid content for all submissions. Paid content is the go when the big boys are jumping up and down about copyright. And if that means US20c per view and you’ve got your video on 20 sites being watched as little as 10 times a day each thats still US$40 a day! Once you add Kurbs online promotion techniques on top of that well . . . add another zero!
Anyway! back to these videos from some of the biggest names in self promotion advice!
First off we got Derek from CDbaby stating almost verbatim from the article I put out yesterday. But Derek’s like a god to the indie music scene so that’s okay.
Finally, if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, discover how the internet and definitions of “shelf space” have given dominance to the economic theory of the “Long Tail” – in short the death of “hits” and “blockbusters” and the growth of niches and selectivity is good news for indie artists everywhere. What happens as the 75% ($30b) share of the market controlled by the majors crumbles and punters look to distribute that spend elsewhere?
Also just a reminder of how powerful and exciting embedding stuff is – you can buy cuts from my last album right here!!! I’m not saying you should want to but accesibility is everything! Thats what kurb is about – digital accesibility and digital marketing that will outstrip the effectiveness of anything thats ever come before.
Kurb is a powerful new presence for marketing in the 21st century. We know the economic models, we know the marketing models, we stay up to date on the latest techniques and services and most importantly we exponentialise all of this by using technology your average record exec hasn’t even considered. What we’re doing is new. Don’t miss your opportunity to work with us.
kurbpromoATgmail.com
+64 (0)27 6848250
Links
June 10, 2007
Reality Compound Active October 05 – April 07
Reality Compound Blog Looking sad
Kurb Promotions My promotions company for indie artists
Sad looking original Compassion Fatigue blog
My Serious Funky Drum’n Bass Myspace – DJ Romantech
Matt’s Blog
June 10, 2007
Well I did it again.
Got all worked up about being a blogger.
I was supposed to have one for my fake band, one for real, one for discussing uhh “relationships”? And another one just for jamming pure fiction. I barely made a dozen posts between them. What was I thinking?
I need to work at this thing.
The writing part I’m fine with it’s just . . . regulating it that frustrates me – I see the value of blogging, letting people see what youre thinking out loud if they care, and uhm packaging that product – but that is if I have some blog I never write then its of no value. So as you can see, I think I’m gonna try and start with the one blog and see what I can do.
It’s just my audiences! Alot of people followed the bulletins I sent out for my fake band reality compound. I’ve collected over 300,000 words of bulletins between Oct 2005 and March 2007 – i bulletined them considering that oe day I might put the manuscript together into something. I guess I still will do something. But it became obvious that mysapce was too restrictive for what I was attempting. I needed to get stuck into internet TV to keep pushing the boundaries.
Blogging on myspace on the changes in the music industry has actually been a really useful way to underline my credibility and now that I am running a successful business supporting recording artists in almost all aspects oftheir promotion it’s kind of a hard thing to let up on. It feels good to be good at something thats good to be good at. Heh.
I’ve got lots of ideas. People are pretty fascinated with sex and relationships so thats pretty fascinating in itself. It entertains them; I like to provide entertainment. I like building characters and narratives, I’ve always known that writing was something I was going to get into as I got older, and I’m not getting any younger. But I still enjoy making smooth beats and promoting gigs and I will keep doing it as long as I still enjoy it and am able to do it.
Building my business as it expands rapidly on top of my music commitments takes up most of my time. Whatever I’m trying to say I guess right now I’m just trying to force myself into the habit of saying it!
Cheers, Matt
