Music Marketing

Posted: September 4, 2004

When a hit song comes on the radio, we often believe that it is there because it is a popular artist or a catchy song—in other words, that public demand placed it on the radio. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Almost any music that gets to your ear—unless you are an avid collector of dusty old jazz records a la Steve Buscemi in Ghost World—is there because of a successful music marketing campaign.

With Sony Music making headlines by admitting to pay radio stations to play their artists, the level of music marketing reached new heights. Unfortunately for us, there are not many people with the kind of extra capital lying around to pay the big bucks that radio stations might ask for, or to hire the legal defense team to defend your illegal actions.

Music marketing for the rest of us is a little bit more small-time. Some of the best promo items I ever received as a music critic were made by hand and mailed especially to me and a few of the bands other favorite writers. With a little TLC, a promo package can become a treasure trove to delve through, and I can tell you that getting a nice intimate gift like that always made me more disposed to like the music on the album.

But small things like that will only get you so far, and as we all know, even if every critic in the world likes a piece of entertainment, that does not mean that it will succeed—just take a look at all the ink that has been spilled over Arrested Development, a Fox show that barely made it into a third season.

In order to compete with the big boys, you have to bring out the big guns, but you must find the high ground by staying ahead of the technological curve. Only by using technology as soon as it becomes available can you ensure that you will be using your music-marketing budget to its fullest capacity, dollar for dollar.

Recently, the technology for search-based online advertising has reached its true potential. By combining traditional advertising with the ability to geo-target the type of music listeners that are most likely to buy your albums, search-based advertising is a revolutionary step forward in terms of allowing the smaller fish in the music industry compete with the big whales.

Just as posting music online has become a way for bands to appeal directly to their fans, search-based advertising allows music marketers to forgo the enormous cost of setting up a traditional music marketing campaign, and instead hit hard with a focused attack.

With search-based advertising, the people can take back the Internet, and use it to their advantage. No longer will we need to listen to what the three biggest record companies tell us to. With and online music marketing system, music has never sounded better.

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