This article began as a response by Jeff Price to TuneCorner contributor George Howard’s essay on Psychographics. Here it is with its own space, including plenty of room for comments. Chime in!
Many artists believe that if they just had the proper marketing and promotion their music would get heard and their careers would take off.
When a major releases an album they are NOT looking to sell 50,000, 100,000, 250,000 copies of an album. They want to have a “grand slam”, sell millions of copies and have a multi-platinum mega global hit. In order for them to have a “grand slam” they have to swing hard and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, on marketing and promotion – print ads, radio spots, videos, expensive re-mixes by top producers, flier campaigns, street teams, placement in record stores, independent radio promoters, posters, stickers and on and on. They go for it. Majors have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 50 years marketing and promoting bands yet 98% of major record label releases fail (this is such an important point, I am going to state it again – 98% of major record label releases fail!). How could this be possible, after all, they are marketing it aggressively?
Artists create art – music, paintings, poems, books, graphic drawings, movies, short films etc. People love art. We need it. It makes us human, it inspires us, it moves us, it defines us. We want to find the art in the world that makes us react – somehow. Hate it, love it, worship it, inspire to be as good as it, cause us to laugh, cry, scream….but it makes us react. People aspire to be the artist that can impact the world – and the lucky few have the talent and skills to create it.
In the world of music, the first steps are to create the songs and record them, then get it out to the world. In the “old” days, the way to get music out to the world was through the media outlets that people listened to, watched and read – commercial radio, television and magazines. Access to these media outlets was primarily provided by the record label. Many many artists and songs got played on the radio, videos played on MTV and feature articles in Rolling Stone and yet they did not take off. Why? Because people did not react to the music.
Take Nirvana’s song “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. If the song or video did not cause people to react it would not have mattered how many times people heard it or saw it. It became a hit NOT because it got exposure, but because the exposure allowed people to see it and hear it and upon seeing and hearing it, it caused a reaction.
The magic is not in the exposure, its in the art!
In the old days, there was a huge fundamental problem, art could not gain access to the media outlets to get exposure UNLESS a gatekeeper let it in. But the media outlets have, and continue, to change thanks to the internet.
YouTube replaced MTV, and anyone can upload a video to YouTube. There is no gatekeeper. Your video is available to be seen. And when one person sees it, and likes it, they have the instant ability to share it with an unlimited amount of others via email, embedding it on their own webpage or rating it. Commercial radio is being replaced by web-based radio stations like iMeem, LastFM, MySpace Music and more. And anyone can have their songs available to hear at those “stations.”
Playlists of music are not being programmed by an individual “Program Director” or “Music Director” but by algorithm based software and friend recommendations. Magazines have been replaced by Blogs and MP3 Blogs. Anyone can be a worldwide publisher around things they like. People search for things on the internet based on what THEY like, and search engines like Google scour the net to smallest crevices to provide specific links and results to what people they are looking for.
The point is, anyone now has access to the media outlets. Once in those outlets, the art can be seen, shared and discovered. The trick to all of this is you need to have art that causes a reaction. If you can do that, you can now directly put it into the new media outlets where it will have a profound and significant impact. You will become famous, and from there, well, you will need to figure out what to do next.
And if you think I am nuts and this just does not happen – here’s some links to some things that has caused “reaction” and fame for its creators. Some are TuneCore customers, some are not. Some created fame accidentally, others intentionally. Some are straight up music videos (Boyce Avenue), some are people singing on top of other people’s songs (Numma Numma), some have the action on top of the song causing the reaction (OK GO), some are funny (Kelly) others are just, well, I am not sure…but they do cause reaction (and one I just put in because I love it – and look how many people I get to share it with!)
The trick is no longer in getting access to the outlets, but in creating the art that reacts:
Final Countdown (the ear bleeder version)
