Online Music is the Future of the Music Business, and the Future is Now.

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

Comments

[doubleagame]

Thanks for this entry, Mike.