• Artist Management
• Online Music Promotion
• Auckland Posters – Design and Print
• DVD Duplication
• Cheap Graphic Design
• DVD copying
• Music Marketing Blog
  
• Youtube Promotions

Blog Promotion

Supernatural Conspiracies

Dating Girls

Seeking Girls

NZ single

Home Improvement

Graphic Design

PPC manager

Freelance Writer

KURB SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING TOP INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR 2009:

1: Website Development
2: Google Adwords / PPC
3: Blog Promotion
4: Online Video Marketing
5: SEO
6: Email Management / Marketing
7: Article Marketing
8: Social Media Marketing
9: Viral Marketing
10: Community Building

Check small business marketing strategies here or email: kurbpromo@gmail.com

1: WEB DESIGN + DEVELOPMENT: Most small businesses websites don’t succeed because it doesn’t provide a compelling experience for consumers who visit their site. You can’t afford to see your website as a static platform. It must develop at least every month. Continued commitment to developing website design and content that more effectively express your brand as well as help your customers to get the information they need to buy from you means they are confident to make purchases, and sales happen. If your website

2: PPC MANAGEMENT / ADWORDS: Pay per click advertising on Google and other content networks is the fastest and most powerfully qualified option for advertising spending in 2009. With as little as $20 p/week you can begin highly measured and precisely targeted campaigns with us on Google Adwords. Adwords is great for any service business or business offering high value products and is even more effective when targeting genders, age groups and cities/regions. Even amateurs can return positive ROI advertsing on Google through Adwords but experience in using the PPC can lead to radically enhanced results.

3: BLOG PROMOTION: Blogging is still a top strategy for small business marketing as long as it doesn’t interfere with normal operations. A well maintained blog developed over months has so many advantages in reinforcing your whole online marketing effort from SEO, customer service, website development, the work put in to build a lively and dynamic blog will never be wasted. We provide blog set up, blog design, blog promotion and can even create content and run your blog for you.

4: ONLINE VIDEO: Online video is yet to flex it’s muscles as the new power in online marketing. Buyers seek engagement, trust and authority with products, service providers and brands. They seek stories that give commodities and their brands value and credibility and video is the most powerful way to engage people and quickly create trust, authority as well as impact. Businesses using videos will have a much greater opportunity to appeal to visitors, and more importantly online video is only going to get bigger and continue to steal more influence from traditional TV.

5: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION AND MARKETING: Search engine marketing is still the most powerful marketing technique accessible to entrepreneurs on small budgets, but precisely for this reason that SEO finds itself at #5 on this list. SEO is competitive. SEO is a challenge for new websites. Ranking highly in Google for your favoured keyword search terms is better than any advertising and would give you unmatched access to your market. But the results of SEO work can vary. A Successful SEO campaign takes research, it requires a lot of tedious tasks, and that of course costs. I will underline how powerfully effective our SEO can be but you must have the patience and commitment for it if you are in a competitive niche.

6: EMAIL MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING: Maintaining relationsips with a client database through email marketing is still one of the most powerful ways to generate dependable recurring revenue. We provide professional email management solutions for all our clients, but those who are interested in email marketing should know you will have to build your contacts first through other online marketing efforts, most often a blog, and then maintain your mail out, which is going to need content. Once you can graduate to greater levels of automated email marketing, you can implement powerful systems to create wealth with minimum maintenance.

7: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: Anyone who tells you they are a social media expert had better be ready to back that up with proof. Social Media is not a strategy for ROI. The aim of social media is to build meaningful relationships with engaged social media users who have the power to build a powerful, authoritative and authentic word of mouth. Just like blogs, building a strong social media presence has many benefits for small businesses, but must remain practical in terms of the bottom line.

8: Article Marketing: Article Marketing leverages written content for exposure that can be syndicated far and wide to provide exposure to click through traffic as well as considerable SEO benefits. Article syndication as well as freelance article creation is offered as part of our general online marketing strategies. If you don’t have time to build your web presence, it’s better we create monthly content for you then having no new content at all.

9:Viral Marketing: More powerful than spreading ideas is building an idea that spreads itself. Whether a video or other media, the essntial concept is the power of an idea to proliferate by way of online sharing. The success of a Viral Marketing campaign is never assured and taking risks to put forward powerful branding messages or leverage powerful value propositions that engage so deeply that it spreads online or through word of mouth is a longshot but always has the potential to be outrageously successful with a bit of character and flair.

10: Community building: Again building a community around your brand makes long term commitment and personal contribution unavoidable. You can’t just create community based loyalty to a brand overnight. Certainly, strategies to nurture your community and provide functionality by way of a forum or other platforms to encourage different kinds of interaction and user driven content creation around your brand can be provided easily and inexpensively, but early on there will need to be a dedicated effort to inject activity into the community space. This can be more time consuming and long range than many small businesses are prepared for.

Not much. I need something to write about here. A concept.

I think I prefer Such Heavy Wings for my public personal blog platform.

But compassion fatigue sounds good I might develop it as something edgy. Weird.

Kinda boring, I know, but hey. Even if im posting blogs about CD and DVD duplication, printing or reproduction projects, or Kids Pirate birthday childrens entertainment parties or just pushing my clients

Kanarek – Psychedelic Fusion; Hollywood/Toronto

Golpe Con Classe – Hip Hop/Latin; Spain

Cut The Bull PR – Publicity and Artist Representation, Hollywood

Al Walser – Pop/R&B; California/LiechtenstienPhoenix Block – New Wave/Electropop; Florida

Ganga – Chill Out/Downbeat; DenmarkNow . . . You Die! Metal / Crust Punk; Melbourne, Australia

Koshowko- Electro Pop; Melbourne, Australia

Auckland Painting – Residential and Commercial painters; Auckland, New Zealand

The Embassadors – Jazz; International collective

DJ TKD – Hip Hop; New Zealand

Element – Hip Hop; New Zealand

Azumuth – Rock; Melbourne, Australia

Roger Greenaway – A/C; Wellington, New Zealand

Murrays Chosen Few – Classic Rock; Australia

Romantech – Drum’n Bass/Downbeat; Auckland, New Zealand (me)

. . . you’ll be able to observe how I use links and keyword anchor text to create content that attracts traffic.

DIGITAL COACHING FOR ARTISTS/MUSICIANS

Kurb is a New Zealand based media promotions company providing a regular blog on digital promotion, marketing digital content and creating revenue from new media online.

Kurb also provides online promotion and revenue management services for musicians and artists internationally.CD / DVD duplication and poster services. Our physical media services come with free graphic set up and support, free delivery, and free promotions advice and support for musicians.

And the best value fast turnover physical media services in New Zealand including

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo -
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.squidoo.com/kurb

We provide expert and affordable promotion support in all web 2.0 areas: Cutting edge Social Network promotion (Myspace, Facebook, Bebo etc.), Social Media, Blogging, Spam management, Content creation, Content management, Content Distribution, OMD, RSS, Aggregators, podcasts, Search ranking, Search marketing and PPC campaigns on Google and Facebook, Website design, Website monetization, Video production + promotion,

We also have an extensive self promotion area for independent musician and talent featuring dozens of articles, how to features and blog links.

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.squidoo.com/kurb
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/new_clients_free_consultation.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_cds.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_promotions.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_artists.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_posters.htm

http://www.romantech.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/romantech
http://www.youtube.com/user/djromantech
http://www.last.fm/music/Romantech
http://www.ilike.com/artist/Romantech
http://www.squidoo.com/romantech
http://romantech.wordpress.com
http://romantech.blogspot.com
http://www.amplifier.co.nz/artist/7718/
http://cdbaby.com/cd/djromantech
http://www.reverbnation.com/romantech

http://www.realitycompound.com
http://www.myspace.com/realitycompound
http://www.youtube.com/user/realitycompound
http://www.last.fm/music/Reality+Compound
http://www.squidoo.com/realitycompound
http://realitycompound.wordpress.com
http://realitycompound.blogspot.com
www.amplifier.co.nz/artist/13634/reality_compound.html

http://www.ganga.dk

http://www.alwalser.com

I’LL BE HONEST ABOUT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION. IF YOU PLAN TO GET OUT OF MUSIC IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS WITHOUT PUTTING IN ANY WORK TIO ESTABLISH AN ASSET AND WITHOUT MAKING ANY MONEY – THEN WORRY ABOUT YOUR CD AND FORGET ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE.

IF YOU WANT TO BE MAKING MONEY IN MUSIC IN 2 YEARS START WORRYING ABOUT THIS NOW.

Links as I say pretty often, is the main way you get your website ranking nice and highly on google -

Google’s not just the biggest search engine and genrator of advertising revenue in the world.

so spreading your links around not only gets people interested in clicking those links but more importantly, help to tell google how special you are in your area of talents.

There are now – thanks to web 2.0 – HEAPS of places you can leave links. Blogs, Social Networks, Forums, and all your profiles most obviously.

That’s mainly why I joined Seth Godin’s site http://www.squidoo.com after checking out some tips from a pdf sent to be by a chillout and downtempo artist I’m working with, Ganga from Denmark.

Because Squidoo, not REALLY that remarkable for being a cross between a blogsite and a wiki (you might want to think about knowing the difference if you don’t) rather, “gives good google juice”.

Links back from squidoo, which anyone can create, help rank your site.

I’m thinking that I should probably stop giving out advice without explaining why google ranking is so important, but I dont have time to blog all day. But when you use wordpress like I am now its easy just to type out the links and create a live link like this:

 http://www.kurb.co.nz

Now doing this and creating a live link in Rich Text, can be cut and pasted as is, even into a non rich text html field and when its published regardless of whether its live or not people can still cut and paste the link, though obviously this is nowhere near as good as a live link but basically – this way you can keep your little “link family” of all your important links on hand in one place to simply cut and paste whenever you need them.

Myspace is a typical example of a site that has rich text html, normal html, and no html areas so just typing out the URL in rich text as I have done below covers you for all possibilities.

But also in wordpress and other blogging platforms, you can create rich text with live links and then just swap them over to copy and paste the html code, so you can post your links into normal html fields to create links as well and to be honest, that covers alot of the best opportunities on myspace and blogs, forums etc. so you can plop down links basically anywhere you a writing in a box and publishing it to the net, you should be leaving a link!!! And having all these links everywhere just reinforces the message to the those little baby google spiders . . .

YOU ARE IMPORTANT!!!!!!

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.squidoo.com/kurb
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/new_clients_free_consultation.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_cds.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_promotions.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_artists.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_online_management_digital_coaching_for_artists_and_musicians.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_posters.htm

http://www.ganga.dk

http://www.alwalser.com

MORE KURB LINK BUILDING ON MYSPACE

Okay just some extra morsels on SEO and link building.

Please bare in mind what I’m talking about here is known as “whitehat SEO” that means your not doing anything wrong but if you know anything about what I do and know you’ll probably be aware I’ve got tricks up my sleeve which are just naughty and plain not fair – but that’s not something I discuss “freely” haha – at least not yet!

But what I’m doing now is making up word documents with my different link family set ups.

For example I want to be able to choose to leave just a few of my most important links on a blog or a myspace comment and I also want the choice between the rich html/non html URLs and the normal html.

But if I’m creating or posting a blog or a bulletin or developing a new profile, or a squidoo lense I’ll want the full roll call of all my links, kurb links, my personal artist links, client links – the works.

Now one of the reasons I’ve been down in the dumps a little is because the myspace madness continues, and it’s been a BUMPY ride.

Myspace used to have some MASSIVE loopholes for exploiting links and google but for the last year you can’t go 5 minutes without myspace changing the rules. Now their intentions are noble – to stop the spammers – although the damage was done a year ago and those guys have taken their money and gone. To be honest myspace is taking it to a level at which the site is becoming increasingly restrictive to use for even muso’s and punters – who are suffering with annoying hassles after the spammers have cleared out.

As if the captcha code’s weren’t enough they’ve now developed their “msplinks” system so you can’t leave myspace through a link directly without myspace interfering with a warning screen.

It’s weird. Blogs are fine but profiles and bulletins . . . not so much. This is a real drag – especially as some of my links have been shut down because myspace have decided they are spam links to some unsavoury site. I’ve worked out how to get around it already, but its still a big DRAG!!!! I’ve lost about 20% of my website traffic that used to come to my site through myspace alone.

  So here’s my short link list in rich html, in URL form so it can be cut and pasted in non html also.

http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_cds.htm
http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_artists.htm
http://www.romantech.co.nz
http://www.realitycompound.com

Here’s the same list in Html

<a href=”http://www.kurb.co.nz/”>http://www.kurb.co.nz</a><a href=”http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo”>http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo</a><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo”>http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo</a><a href=”http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/”>http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com</a><a href=”http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_cds.htm”>http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_cds.htm</a><a href=”http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_artists.htm”>http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_artists.htm</a></span><a href=”http://www.romantech.co.nz/”>http://www.romantech.co.nz</a>

<a href=”http://www.romantech.co.nz/”>http://www.realitycompound.com</a>

But given in html I can use keywords and phrases to lure both google and punters, that’s what I’ll do! SO instead in normal html fields, which include most comment boxes and all bullitens on myspace, I’ll aim for this:

Kurb Promotions Website
Kurb Myspace
Kurb Promo on Youtube
Official Kurb Blog – click through to subscribe
Kurb – Auckland and NZ’s best value CD and DVD duplication – no set up costs, free delivery.
Check out our digital coaching – online promotion and income generating packages for artists
Drum’n Bass DJ Romantech
Electroclash Media Group Reality Compound

Which in html code will look like this:

<a href=”http://www.kurb.co.nz/”>Kurb Promotions Website </a><a href=”http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo”>Kurb Myspace</a><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo”>Kurb Promo on Youtube</a><a href=”http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/”>Official Kurb Blog – click through to subscribe</a><a href=”http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_cds.htm”>Kurb – Auckland and NZ’s best value CD and DVD duplication – no set up costs, free delivery.</a><a href=”http://databass.giantrobot.co.nz/kurb_artists.htm”>Check out our digital coaching – online promotion and income generating packages for artists</a><a href=”http://www.romantech.co.nz/”>Drum’n Bass DJ Romantech</a>

<a href=”http://www.romantech.co.nz/”>Electroclash Media Group Reality Compound</a>

And finally: all the links in rich html.

 http://www.kurb.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/kurbpromo
http://www.youtube.com/user/kurbpromo -
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.squidoo.com/kurbHow I approach a new client at Kurb (Dec 07)
Kurb – Auckland and NZ’s best value CD and DVD duplication – no set up costs, free delivery.
Index of digital promotion, media, marketing and online artist managment services @ Kurb
Check out our digital coaching – online promotion and income generating packages for artists
Info on digital Video marketing – and production services available in Auckland
Online promotion options available @ Kurb
More promotions articles features and info for artists
Cheap posters – placement in AUckland or Free delivery in NZhttp://www.romantech.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/romantech
http://www.youtube.com/user/djromantech
http://www.last.fm/music/Romantech
http://www.ilike.com/artist/Romantech
http://www.squidoo.com/romantech
http://romantech.wordpress.com
http://romantech.blogspot.com
http://www.amplifier.co.nz/artist/7718/
http://cdbaby.com/cd/djromantech
http://www.reverbnation.com/romantechhttp://www.realitycompound.com
http://www.myspace.com/realitycompound
http://www.youtube.com/user/realitycompound
http://www.last.fm/music/Reality+Compound
http://www.squidoo.com/realitycompound
http://realitycompound.wordpress.com
http://realitycompound.blogspot.com
www.amplifier.co.nz/artist/13634/reality_compound.html

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog but I’m not going to be posting any more promotions articles you can check that out at:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com
http://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.kurb.co.nz

I’m sure I’ll come up with something for compassion fatigue. Reinvent it as some kind of platform for something.

Let’s wait and see.

I’m just running around all my blogs just having a look at whats going on, tidying up anything and revising what I’m doing.

People get caught up in blogs as a business tool, a networking and social tool, and a search optimizer but they forget the timeless value of just simply using a journal to get your thoughts down and reflect on where you’re at.

Compassion fatigue was my original “other general stuff” blog, First on Blogger back in the day, then I added a blog on wordpress as well, then I started just piling on all the promo articles I was doing and it all got fairly pointless pretty swiftly as these posts are all well covered by my promotions blogs:

Well yeah lets just have that blogroll again shall we?

Promo
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.comhttp://kurbpromotion.blogspot.com
http://www.kurb.co.nz

covering music promotion and digital marketing stuff. These are my professional blogs I update most regularly
My Music

http://romantech.blogspot.com
http://romantech.wordpress.com
http://www.myspace.com/romantech
http://www.romantech.co.nz

This is where you can follow stuff to do with tunes, drum’n bass, beats, gigs in Auckland other stuff.

http://realitycompound.com
http://realitycompound.wordpress.com
http://realitycompound.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/realitycompound

This is my crazy multi media project. I don’t really know whats going on with it right now but hey.
Other music

http://theinformedchoice.blogspot.com
http://informedchoice.wordpress.com

General mp3 blog. No posts yet.

http://starff.blogspot.com
http://starf.wordpress.com

Starf is for general copy I produce, especially “advertorial” type content for clients. No posts yet

Other stuff.

http://shutupandkissme.wordpress.com
http://squeakybone.blogspot.com

I also blog about girls because its of interest to me. It’s an interesting topic.

http://piratematty.wordpress.com
http://piratematty.blogspot.com

For my pirate stuff. I’m planning on getting back into childrens entertainment.

http://modernjourneys.wordpress.com
http://modernjorneys.blogspot.com

for my fiction and general creative writing. No posts yet.

See this is one frustrating part of my job is trying to understand technology that only geeks currently use so that 6,12,18 months down the track when it becomes popular enough to offer real promotion opportunities to musicians and creatives I’ve already got a thorough understanding – as it was one of the great fortunes of my life that such a thing happened with myspace and social networking to put me where I am today. I will be blogging soon about deciding how to avoid wasting your time resources on sites that won’t help promote your music because there’s no one there to promote your music to.

But see as I’ve said before, promoting on the net is all about having the distribution systems in place for the ongoing genration of content, and having this set up in the most favourable way for search.

Although theories are starting to fester in the unlikeliest corners of Nigeria that Social – with the potential to infinitely and effortlessly connect, network, aggregate and deliver is gonna eventually be bigger than search, the sons of myspace will destroy the sons of google.

But you’ll see that rather than going nutty on the quantity and quality of my content creation (and here I am writing a boring as geeky blog post to blow off steam) which comes further down the line, I’m strengthening my distribution network.

Because the latest technology I am trying to come to grips with in this area is social bookmarking and feeds and the like and though it may seem otherwise to you who are co ordinated enough to play an instrument – I am not naturally adapted to such geek environments.

And don’t try and argue that Stumbleupon, Digg and Del.icio.us isn’t geek shit. Myspace is mainstream. Social bookmarking is still geek shit.

So whats it about? Well I have managed to wrap my head around the significance of distribution and ease of access to quality information.

Although as you know I write my own material when I can, and I’m trying to get more into useful and unique analyses, you probably notice I repost a lot of articles I find for you people to read and the happy result is more business and more kudos for my business by providing access to significant items of interest in my chosen field of expertise.

So whereas in times past this would have been considered akin to plagiarism, these days, with the flaws of the internet manifested by google in screeds of pointless unvaluable information or “noise”, being able to provide direct access to high quality information, creating trust and worthiness – as I’ve pointed out several times – is now quite a powerful marketing strategy.

Hopefully you can reflect on how all this relates to YOUR online promotion strategy.

What kind of access and redistribution of information can you provide to your fanbase to add value to your brand?

More less geek oriented stuff coming through soon.

Stupid bloody bookmarking sites. This better bump my google ranking and get me lots of hits.

Lets see how this goes:

Awesome article dropping down on the state of music videos as a promotional tool and source of revenue to the music industry.

- Don’t forget now! Kurb is australasia’s leader in dedicated techniques to market and distribute your videos online through Youtube and potential revenue generators such as megavideo, revver and over 15 other video sharing sites.

This new article drops after Bob Lefsetz and other cutting edge media critics denounce the MTV awards and Top 40 becoming just a circus sideshow to what’s really happening in the music industry today – as witnessed by the brutal cannibalising of one of it’s own, Ms. Britney Spears.

This from indystar:

Consumers Bop to Rhythm of Online Music Videos

[who came up with that clanger of a headline for such a decent article? Don't they know that blogging is 50% headline and 50% content???]

Viewership of music videos moved from TV to the Web at such a fast pace that few saw it coming.

Yahoo, the Web’s top music destination, streams 240 million music videos monthly. MTV, which defined the young music video medium but now devotes nearly all of its airtime to non-music video fare, attracted 1 million viewers in prime-time viewing in August.

“Online is the single-largest place where consumers are watching music videos,” says Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of eLabs, Universal Music Group’s digital division. “When we release a video, we still put it on MTV and BET, but in terms of the most impact from audience and revenue, it’s online.”

Videos used to be given to networks such as MTV to sell CDs. Now, labels charge for video usage. “It was clear that all of our content needed to be paid for,” says Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s global digital business unit. “The times when we could make our content available for free so someone would buy the CD are over. We drive usage to the Internet sites, so we should be paid.”

Hesse wouldn’t disclose exact figures, but Caraeff says licensing of music videos to sites such as Yahoo, AOL Music and YouTube reaps $20 million yearly for Universal and is growing steadily.

YouTube has been at odds with much of the entertainment industry because some of its users digitize content on their own and put it on the site without compensating the content owner. MTV owner Viacom is suing YouTube owner Google in a copyright infringement case.

But Universal, Sony BMG, Warner Music and EMI have agreements allowing their music videos to be shown on YouTube. In exchange, they share in ad revenue. YouTube attracts the largest video viewing – including movie trailers, amateur productions and tech podcasts – on the Web, with 44.8 million visitors in August.

With 23.4 million visitors in August, Yahoo is the most-visited music site, followed by ArtistDirect, MySpace’s music channel, AOL Music and MTV’s music channels, including MTV.com, VH1.com and CMT, according to ComScore.

This summer, Yahoo began offering an application to post many of its videos onto pages of the wildly popular social-network site, Facebook. It has since expanded this concept, via a test site, to post videos from Universal and Sony BMG onto personal Web sites or blogs.

Once word gets out and music fans realize that they can take the latest videos by say, Justin Timberlake or Fergie, and post them to their blog, Yahoo Music general manager Ian Rogers believes the viewing of videos online will grow “from 10 to 100 times over the next one to two years,” he says. “There’s no question people want to do this.”

He says Yahoo fought for several years to shut down sites that offered ways to hack into Yahoo Music and post videos. “We know the demand is there.”
Demand and convenience caused music fans to migrate to the Web to watch the majority of their music videos, says Rogers.

“If you want to see a music video, why would you turn on MTV and hope to see the video you want, when you could go online and get it immediately?” he says. “The shift happened as music videos became more available online and less available on TV. This was a natural evolution.”

MTV, the channel that defined music videos, isn’t sitting out the digital revolution. On-air, the TV channel urges viewers to go to MTV.com to see the latest videos and video premieres. “We realize that we live in an on-demand culture,” says MTV Executive Vice President Courtney Holt.

Holt says on-demand viewing is great, but it’s TV exposure that still makes the difference for emerging bands. He cites groups such as OK Go and Paramore, which had major online exposure but took off after MTV started playing their videos.

MTV recently bought a 50 percent interest in digital music service Rhapsody to expand its online music reach. Both Rhapsody and MTV.com show music videos on their sites, while some sites – most notably Apple’s iTunes – offer them for sale. Caraeff says streaming music videos represents the bulk of the action for music videos and that downloads represent a tiny fraction of sales. Hesse says his best-selling download of all time – a recent Timberlake song – clocked in at just 58,000 sales for $1.99 apiece.
“This is a good, growing business,” he says. “As more people get video iPods, we’ll start to see more people buying music videos.”

Label executives are also looking for streams and downloads to mobile phones – currently a niche business – to explode in the coming years as more wireless customers get multimedia phones.

“The average usage time on a phone for entertainment programming is no more than two or three minutes,” says Caraeff. “The short-form nature of music videos makes it a perfect fit.”

Q&A with Rio Caraeff

USA TODAY’s Jefferson Graham spoke with Caraeff about how music videos have shifted from TV distribution to the Web, and turned into a profit center.

Question: Is TV distribution for music videos still important?
Answer: Online is the single largest place where consumers are watching video. When we release a video, we still put it on MTV and BET, but in terms of the most impact from audience and revenue, it’s online. We’re reaching more people than we’ve ever reached before with our music, and have turned what was a promotional business into a revenue business, worth $20 million a year for us, and growing.

Q. Where are people viewing the music videos online?
A. YouTube and Yahoo Music are the lion’s share, along with MySpace and AOL. In the last quarter, we had 265 million streams of our videos online, and that doesn’t even include YouTube, which is just starting to report activity. We have a Universal channel on YouTube, and the last time I looked, we had 180 million streams. YouTube is becoming the largest place for where our videos are played.

Q. Talk about how you make money off videos.
A. We were the first major label to realize that the old ways of doing business with music videos wasn’t working anymore. Twenty years of videos as a promo piece wasn’t stimulating sales of CDs. We had to turn videos into a premium product that feels free and convince Web sites to pay license fees for usage. Now every time the video is played, we get paid. We also offer them for sale at sites like iTunes, and via mobile phones and Verizon and Sprint. Both are flourishing, but the lion’s share of activity is via streaming.

Q. Music videos used to boast of million-dollar budgets and big-name directors. What’s the state of music videos today?
A. Clearly, the days of multimillion production budgets for videos has waned, but we’ve been able to do more with less. The budgets have come down, but the creativity has risen. With the challenge of doing more with a smaller budget, some of the best videos have come in with no budget, using Mac computers, high-def cameras and a small crew.
I even envision a world where music videos are created by the fan, and collaboration that exists in a digital, all-Internet world – the artist creates the song, and fans can go online, and make the videos. We’re going to see a lot more creativity. It’s no longer just about one big company publishing, it’s a two-way communication. This is completely new to our industry and something we embrace.

Cheers for the connection with Kurb.

Supporting musicians with successful strategies on a budget.

Kurb is NZ’s leader in online promotion strategies for artists and creative projects plus we offer the cheapest
CD/DVD reproduction and
cheap posters available.

Come by our page, theres plenty to pick up about new developments in the music industry in our blogs and theres a whole lot of free info and articles at our self promotions hub. Get some scope checking out our overview of online promotion strategies and if you’re interested our artist packages or brand new campaign packages including CD’s, posters and a dedicated online distribution, promotion and videomarketing program.

All the best with your music, from Kurb
For direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromo

.....................
Kurb Myspace

ew I’m business blogging – shoot me now. How sickening.

You can be rest assured that the devil drives an extremely hard bargain. Apparently it’s a buyers market.

Don’t worry I’ve got 2 more music blogs coming up on content and what to do now no one wants to buy CD’s.

Of course the same principals apply if your small business is in music and you will obviously observe I’m generating content to distribute – not only to strengthen my search network but to create awareness of the work I’m doing by providing free expertise.

My expertise is obviously in online marketing and I’m not too shabby flinging a few words together. But I’m sure you’re good at something you can write or make videos about to – and don’t worry this article took me 4 hours to write.

Marketing 2.0 for Web 2.0 – how can your business benefit?

The Internet is the most powerful and far reaching marketing tool available to small businesses and increasingly word of mouth is now word of blog, email or IM and thats what web 2.0 is – when we stop hearing the messages sent by those who can afford to send them and we just learn from the messages we share from the access the internet now provides to one another.

According to Tim O’Reilly who coined the phrase “Web 2.0” in 2004:

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

Web 2.0 presents opportunities to use the internet in new and interactive ways to deliver an unprecedented amount of information and choice to  unprecedented audience numbers.

Unlike declining traditional media the internet offers users control over access and it gives consumers choice. Web 2.0 represents a major blow for traditional advertising methods because Web 2.0 is about the online experience the user has customised – and no one wants ads! Marketing is to survive only as part of a media experience that is embraced, not an unwelcome interruption to be filtered out.

Social Networking:

Social networking – the explosion of sites like Myspace, Bebo, and Facebook – has transformed the online social environment into a place where branding happens naturally. Myspace, the big daddy of social networking sites, created an online environment where brands as well as bands, characters and ideas could be accounted for with online identities.

You only have to go to the stats to see the wild popularity of these sites in New Zealand and around the world. Even I choked when the Herald quoted 800,000 kiwis use www.bebo.com. It comes behind only Google and Trademe for volume of usage in NZ.

By creating a presence for your business on social networks you are able to present content and interact with other users participating in a massive global network either as an individual representing or creating awareness (this will be required on facebook and bebo which are not so friendly to commercial brands), a brand profile of your business, or even a key product! Or all three! There’s no rule against having multiple accounts.
 
SEO and web 2.0 – when content “goes viral”

It is still the truth that most of your website traffic will come from search engines and in New Zealand that is overwhelmingly accounted for by the Google search engine. To put what is often reported to be a complex and competitive study into simple terms, search engine optimisation (SEO) is based around keywords matched to your content, and the ranking of its relevancy in the search by the amount of links to it and the quality of those links.

Search engines can be influenced in two ways – by both the quality and quantity of written content you make available and the quantity and quality of backlinks created to your site from other sites. Distributing and sharing as much content furnished with links back to your site as you can make available is the most effective way to dramatically increase your search rank, send your brand around the world and bring traffic to your website.

All I will say is that websites that follow the web 2.0 format, which are some of the highest ranked in the world – myspace, youtube, blogger – the last two of which of course are owned by google, are ranked in a different way by google, and using these sites in different ways to make people aware and provide links to your website can have dramatic results.

But when your marketing message has assumed the appearance of a media experience – whether a blog, a podcast or a short video demonstration – that you have made available through your various online social network to share and enjoy as “infotainment” it’s no longer advertising! And when people are motivated to share the information you have provided they are not only building your search ranking but sharing your marketing message that your personal brand represents knowledge and experience of the products and services you provide.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is the hottest thing in internet promotion right now and youtube is popular with an older demographic where social networking hasn’t spread. Unlike everything else I’ve talked about – videos in themselves will not increase your search rank on google! But the message out there is if you can do it, prove it – film it! People want to see for themselves and now you can show them!

Video content provides important information, breaking down the anonymity that effects a potential customer or clients decision to purchase through an online connection based on trust.  Video is also the most potentially effective opportunity to offer deeper understanding through presentation and demonstration.

many more people will connect with your marketing messages as a visual image and when it comes to media – the types of small businesses that could never dream of affording to market by broadcasting video can now provide it cheaply in a way that makes it accessible to targeted users long after it is first made available.

One of the most successful viral campaigns focused on a series of short clips experimenting with blending different unusual objects in a brand presentation for a blender called “will it blend?”– one of these quirky clips featuring an iphone received over 3 million views on youtube.

XML, RSS, P2P, Aggregation

Web 2.0 continues to present newer and better solutions for distributing and accessing information but unlike social networking and video marketing these concepts of syndicating content feeds and providing ever more options for choice and access are ideas which time is yet to come.

But it remains that web 2.0 marketing is about “pull” and not “push”. Using social networking, and sharing blogs and videos, generating content that appeals to users whether it be through information, experience, demonstration, experiments or simply just the quirky, entertaining or humourous is a chance to build awareness of your business while connecting with people in a way they will appreciate and remember.

People are far more likely to “go with what they know” so establishing social profiles and participating in online communities, providing content that people will use and value, in a way that supports higher ranking in searches for your site is the best way for generating leads and contacts in the new online environment. 

Cheers for the connection with Kurb. Supporting musicians with successful strategies on a budget. Kurb in NZ’s leader in online promotion strategies for artists and creative projects plus we offer the cheapest CD/DVD reproduction and cheap posters available.

Come by our page, theres plenty to pick up about new developments in the music industry in our blogs and theres a whole lot of free info and articles at our self promotions hub. Get some scope checking out our overview of online promotion strategies and if you’re interested our artist packages or brand new campaign packages including CD’s, o All the best with your music, from Kurb For direct enquiries get us on gmail as kurbpromo ..................... Kurb Myspace