Beyond MySpace

I just got back from The Verge, a college-oriented music conference for which Experience was a sponsor, and I was figuring on blogging about some of the nifty promotion tips I got there. In the middle of planning my post, it occurred to me that I talk about marketing-related subjects all the time, and I wondered if, seeing as this is an entertainment industry blog, that was appropriate.

The thing is that this is such a promotion-oriented business, and the number of avenues for promotion is constantly expanding. One of the first things I picked up at The Verge was a dropcard, a credit card-like item with a code printed on it that can be entered in at dropcards.com to download a set of mp3s. It came with an ad targeted at musicians, which described the cards as a cheaper, more portable alternative to CD's.

This kind of thing was all over the place, which was the main way that The Verge was different from any other conference I've attended. Everywhere I turned, someone was handing out demos or press kits or pins or postcards or chocolate. Forbes Marketing Group had a booth set up, and the number of items they can print a logo on is probably higher than we have a word to describe.

In any case, it's obvious that music is significantly more publicity-focused than other areas of the industry, which to my mind is because it's one in which the product is much less tangible. Most musicians make most of their money from live performances, and I'm sure most people will agree with me that there's no way to really capture or reproduce a live musical performance. Marketing and publicity efforts just need to be that much more ambitious to get the product out there.

As times and technology progress, there's an increasing amount of DIY work involved in these efforts, even for well-established artists. One of the people I talked to was PJ Antonik, who holds the ubiquitous role of manager for the band Edison. PJ used to manage a couple of other bands, but dropped them in favor of Edison because they just didn't have their (ahem) act together. And while this may seem like an arbitrary matter where things like talent are concerned, I do see a strong correlation. By Friday evening, I had a large stack of CD demos in my apartment, which I've been listening to since. Some of the CD's have a professional look, while some are pretty shabby. See if you can guess which ones inevitably have better music on them.

Of course, there's more to it than CD's these days. The first thing that comes to mind is MySpace, which has become more-or-less part of the standard toolbox for artists of any genre. The funny thing is that I've met very few people who actually like MySpace; for every one who does, I talk to at least three who would gladly abandon it in a heartbeat if something better came along (I'm not a fan myself, though that's mainly because of MySpace's ugly layout and frequent use as a tool for social drama).

This was actually a question raised by Kevin Lyman, creator of the Vans Warped Tour, who was one of the conference's most prominent speakers, when he asked his audience for a marketing and promotion workshop whether they thought the future of music lied with huge uber-communities like MySpace or smaller, niche communities. Nobody was particularly willing to pass judgment, but it was clear that Lyman was interested in niche development.

Both kinds of communities have their merits. We'll always have use for mega-sized ones like MySpace for purposes of basic accessibility, but I think that it'll be through the more specialized ones that real publicity and community building will take place.

For any medium, the best way to expand your audience is through the one you've already got. The thing is that even that audience is fickle, and you need to offer them something they can't get anywhere else. This takes targeted efforts, and more than anything it takes innovation.

(This is the idea behind guerrilla marketing, but the problem there is that guerrilla marketing only works once. No matter who puts up lite-brites advertising their product in public places, all it's going to invoke is the Mooninite scare. Get the idea?)

So in other words, for any of you who are skipping to the bottom of this gargantuan post, the reason I talk about marketing so damn much is because it's so damn important for us. One thing that all The Verge's speakers made clear is that the traditional record label industry is dying (or dead, depending who you ask). It's not enough anymore for everyone to just do the tour, the t-shirts, and the $16.99 CD. Getting entertainment out there means making it unique. Between a band putting out the usual stuff and a band selling their entire album on a dropcard for three bucks, and having Forbes or another firm print up CD wallets with their logo, I'll put my money on the latter.