Music & Marketing: URBANIZED!

Okay, so our headline isn’t entirely truth-based. But, it’s no pipe dream, either. The reality is that new online music business models are changing the way artists sell their music and interact with fans. Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and individual blogs are facilitating this in a big way.

Consumer buying patterns are changing, from those who have moved away from CDs and albums to picking up singles on iTunes, to those who circumvent the entire system altogether and buy directly from the artists.

Cutting out the Middleman

It started back in March of 2008, when industrial giant and former MTV-favorite Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails decided to offer the complete first volume of their latest album completely free for consumers to share (the album in its entirety was made available on the band’s website for a whopping $5 download). Not to be outdone, Radiohead then stepped up with their digital release of In Rainbows, allowing fans to pay whatever they felt like and download the record from their website.

But not every artist has the luxury of brand-like name recognition that Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and their ilk enjoy. That’s why digital music shops like iTunes and CD Baby remain the go-to source for most music lovers. Yet it’s tough for indie artists to get the kind of promotion and attention their mainstream counterparts enjoy.

Digital Sales by the Numbers

The best selling digital song of all-time, so far, is the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”. The track earned this title in April of this year after knocking out the previous record holder, Flo Rida, with 5,561,000 million downloads. The Peas are, of course, a household name now, and enjoyed huge success before breaking the download record.

But what about indie artists, like Gagnez, a Los Angeles-based poet, speaker, hip hop artist and producer? His popular “La Da Da Da” track has accumulated over 50,000 YouTube views – but not entirely on its own. Thanks in part to a social media-made connection with YouTube-famous Israeli video maker Lilach Chen (whose videos of her talented fingers have racked up over 12,000,000 views), the track is featured in a quirky and fun video called “Fingers Breakdance 5”. The song also features Gina Rene, another artist with a strong social media presence.

It’s this kind of exposure and creative teaming up that’s going to give traditional music sales models and marketing a run for their money as artists take matters into their own hands. New ground is being forged when it comes to sharing and promoting creative material, and soon it won’t be any surprise to read a headline like “Gagnez Surpasses 20 Million Download Mark”, and find that he did it all with the support of social media self-promotion, fans, and creative collaboration. And isn’t that what it should all be about?

full article: http://bit.ly/9YQ2Gi