Hey all,
Sorry about the hokey title, but I wanted to get my opinion on digital retail and distribution out straight away. I’ve been a fan of Jeff Price’s for awhile, having admired SpinART, the early work he did with EMusic, and what he has now done with TuneCore. To me, digital distribution is one of the greatest things to come out of the Internet, as it pertains to music. To read stories about Trent Reznor spending $56.61 to distribute Ghosts I-V to Amazon’s MP3 store through TuneCore really blows my mind. And the best part is that every independent artist can do the same thing.
I’ve worked at several indie record labels over the years, and I now teach a 12-week online course for Berklee College of Music‘s online school called Music Marketing 201. My course covers all the major marketing segments an artist should consider when creating their marketing plan: building and maintaining your community, merchandising, branding, online marketing and video, advertising, publicity, some form of radio (online, non-com, and college primarily), touring, and of course retail and distribution. We thought it might be helpful to provide you with a free lesson excerpt from the course.
If you are this deep on TuneCore’s site, it’s likely you already
have a handle on online retail and distribution. TuneCore has some
great resources here that thoroughly explain what they do. It goes
without saying that the long tail and endless shelf space that online
retail offers is a huge plus for the independent musician. So, rather
than sharing something with you that you probably already know, we put
together a quick lesson from my online course that talks about the opportunities available to the independent musician at physical retail.
I know it might seem counter intuitive to discuss a marketing
segment that is clearly struggling on whole, but I think to discount
physical independent retail (I’m not talking about the big box
retailers here), even if it is not necessarily a growth segment of the
industry, is a mistake. There are some amazing independent retailers
that can be tremendous partners for developing artists. Josh Madell at
Other Music in NYC, Eric Levin at Criminal Records in Atlanta, Mike
Dreese at Newbury Comics in Boston, John Kunz at Waterloo in Austin and
many other forward-thinking music retail owners still play a big part
in “breaking” artists. They are community focused, Internet savvy, and
have an infrastructure in place to promote new music. A successful
musician needs to have their marketing campaign firing on all
cylinders. I still believe that a physical retail campaign, even if it
is accomplished through consignment, should be considered as part of
the big picture for touring artists that can draw outside of their
hometown.
I hope this quick course excerpt helps
to illuminate some of the opportunities available at traditional
retail. If you are interested in learning more about the course, you
can check it out here. My course, along with the 100 other courses and certificate programs Berkleemusic offers, starts this Monday, April 7th.
Mike King
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