Music And Marketing -- You Need Them Both

from the it's-not-just-one dept

A couple people have sent over Bob Lefsetz' recent post, where he bashes some of the "extreme marketing" efforts from musicians lately. In fact, he picks on quite a few of the examples that we've set out as good examples, including Josh Freese, Jill Sobule and Moldover -- complaining that these are all gimmicks that outshine the music. He asks how many people who have heard about these gimmicks actually heard the music from these artists.

I think he's both right and wrong on this. First, you have to say "compared to what." If Freese, Sobule and Moldover had just come out with an album in the traditional way, how many of the same group of people would likely have heard the album? I'd say a lot fewer. I doubt I would have heard any of them, and now I'm quite familiar with the music of all three.

But... his larger point is definitely dead on. At the core of all of this, it is the music that is key. But putting out good music and being a good marketer are not mutually exclusive. If you do something cool -- something fun or valuable or neat beyond just the music -- it's not going to matter as much if the music itself isn't good. This is why, I have to admit, the one area where I think all three of these artists could have done a better job is actually making the music itself free. All three offered really compelling reasons to buy, but they still hid away the actual music. Why not free up the MP3s, continue the cool "reasons to buy" and get the best of both worlds. Then you get everything: you get people listening to the music and feeling a connection there. You get people paying attention for the "marketing" part, and you still make money thanks to the "reasons to buy."

But that doesn't mean that doing a smart marketing promotion is a bad thing. It just needs to tie in well with the music. The existing "true fans" will already want to hear the music, but if part of the goal is to attract new fans, you have to go beyond just the marketing to give them more access to the core music -- and focus on selling them on real reasons to buy something above and beyond the content.

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My Keynote At The (RIAA Sponsored) Leadership Music Digital Summit

from the fun-stuff dept

In mid-March, I had the pleasure of giving the second day keynote talk at the Leadership Music Digital Summit. It was a lot of fun, and generated some really fascinating discussions (as always). There was a lot of demand to get the video online, and I wanted to thank the team at Leadership Music (Kira and Abby) and Matt Houser who volunteered to put together the video with my slides, which you can see on the media page or embedded below:

Leadership Music Digital Summit 2009 - Mike Masnick keynote address, 3/25/09 from Leadership Music Digital Summit on Vimeo.

If you've seen my earlier Midemnet presentation, this is actually an extended and improved version of that, so part of it will already be quite familiar to you. However, the final 10 minutes of the presentation gives me an opportunity to respond to the biggest question that came after the original presentation: how does this work for less well known musicians. So, I went through five different musicians, who all come from different backgrounds and experiences, representing different "success levels" in the industry, to show that this basic concept of connecting with fans, giving them a reason to buy (and not freaking out about piracy) works quite well.

You'll note at the beginning of the presentation, I note that the RIAA was a major sponsor of the event, and there was a huge RIAA logo hanging over my head (not seen in the video). The RIAA also sponsored the lunch following my keynote. While I actually did end up talking to representatives from all four of the major record labels while in Nashville (with... um... very, very, very different reactions from reps from each label, from outright frosty, to curious, to very interested and engaging), no one from the RIAA itself actually said hello. Too bad.

In the meantime, there are a bunch of new events I'll be speaking at in the coming months (all doing very different presentations), and I'll be putting up a post detailing some of those in the near future as well -- and I hope to meet more readers and Techdirt/Insight Community participants at these events.

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High School Kid Says $20,000 To Hang Out With Josh Freese For A Week: 'Totally Worth It'

from the who-needs-a-college-education? dept

We'd already mentioned that among Josh Freese's hilarious purchase options, someone had bought the $20,000 option -- though no one was entirely sure who it was. Now it turns out that it was a 19-year-old high schooler in Florida, who claims that spending $20,000 on a week with Josh Freese was "totally worth it." Freese seemed to go out of his way to make it into a great adventure for the kid, having him hang out with a bunch of rockstar friends, beyond just the "required" parts of the $20k option. They did, in fact, play mini-golf, though Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo couldn't make it -- so they made that up by having a pizza party at his house. We're still waiting to see if anyone's going to pony up for the $75,000 option...

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Giving People A Reason To Buy: Make Buying Fun

from the what-a-concept dept

One of the key points in talking about giving people a real reason to buy is to make it an experience where people want to pay the prices that you're offering. In fact, one of the best to do this has been Josh Freese -- who set up a variety of hilarious options on what people could pay him for additional value beyond his latest album, causing the $250 option to sell out quickly -- and the $20,000 option to sell out as well (there was only one, but still... someone paid $20,000 for it). $20,000 is a lot, even for getting the following:

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
• T-shirt
• A signed DW Snare from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour.
• Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO and I take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube of course).
• I give you a tour of Long Beach. I'll show ya my first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd St where my buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up some tile just weeks before he joined "Nirvana". I'll show you all my old stomping grounds....the Vandals old rehearsal spot, the house Quackenbush and I use to rent, where to go for the best tacos, Snoop Dogg's high school, etc.... for an extra 50 bucks I'll show you where Adrian and Tom from "No Doubt" live. For another $25 I'll throw in Brooks from Bad Religion and Eric from NOFX's houses too! We then spend the night at the Queen Mary and take the "Ghost Tour" (seperate rooms of course.....no spooning).
• I write 2 songs about you (or if you want 1 can be about you and the other one can be about whatever or whomever you'd like) and it goes on my next record (you can sing back up on them, clap, play the drums, triangle solo...whatever you want).
• Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again.....couples welcome).
• Pick any 3 items out of my closet.

But, still, the whole thing is fun, and that's a big part of the reason why people find it worth buying. There have even been rumors that some bands are looking at buying the $75,000 option, which would get them lots of attention, and include options like Freese playing on tour with them for a month and recording an entire EP about whatever they want.

But, of course, it's not just in the music business where this works. Reader William Jackson writes in to point to an interesting article of a guy noting that making buying fun works in a range of industries, from software to t-shirts. He describes the process of buying a t-shirt at the T-Shirt Deli, a t-shirt shop that is set up just like a deli, and makes the process of buying a t-shirt like the process of buying a sandwich -- including handing you the final product wrapped up in wax paper with stickers... and including a bag of chips as well.

So, if you're looking for ways to give people a reason to buy -- a good place to start is to make buying your product fun.

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Josh Freese's $250 Option Sells Out In Less Than 48 Hours

from the not-bad dept

Last month, we wrote about how Josh Freese was using rather hilarious tiers to sell his latest album. In my keynote at the Leadership Music Digital Summit earlier this week, I used Freese as an example of a less well known artist doing something similar (and yes, we're working to get the video of the keynote online, but it may take a little while). Now Ian Rogers from Topspin alerts us to the fact that Josh's $250 tier has sold out in less than 48 hours (there were a total of 25 available). At that tier you got a signed CD/DVD (and the music as a download), a t-shirt, a signed drumhead and drumstick and lunch with Josh at PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (he's apparently a big fan). That's a gross of $6,250 for just that option alone. That's no $750,000, but it's a pretty damn good start for a musician that is a lot less well known. Looks like Josh is going to become pretty well known at the local PF Changs... and I'm sure some folks will still claim that these models can't work for less well known musicians.

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Drummer Takes Tiered Buying Options To Extreme (And Hilarious) Levels

from the connecting-with-fans-and-giving-them-a-reason-to-buy dept

Over the past year or so, we've chronicled multiple different musicians adopting a "tiered" approach to selling things. It makes a lot of sense: give people different options, and added value for paying more, and they'll often take you up on it. Two of the more impressive examples of this were Jill Sobule and Trent Reznor (two very different artists, obviously). Now it appears that Josh Freese, who has played drums for Reznor's Nine Inch Nails in the past (as well as spending time in Devo, Guns N Roses, the Vandals, and backing a bunch of others... including Sting, Katy Perry, Clay Aitken and various others), is releasing his latest new album with a rather hilarious (if hopefully tongue in cheek) take on the tiers (thanks Brian).

The tiers start out normally enough, though, there doesn't seem to be a free tier (boo!) and the prices even seem slightly higher than Reznor's successful tiers. But then, he starts adding a ton of higher end tiers with various (often extremely funny) options -- all involving access to him or other musicians he's played with (access is a scarce good, of course). It starts at the $50 level, where you can get:

"Thank you" phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like "Is Maynard really THAT weird?" or "Which one of Sting's mansions has the comfiest beds?" or "Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?" or "Why don't the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?" It's your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

And then gets more involved ("lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you're into)") the more you pay. At $1,000, there's: "Get drunk and cut each other's hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)." And, of course, all the way up at $75,000 you get the following:

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download
• T-shirt
• Go on tour with Josh for a few days
• Have Josh write, record and release a 5-song EP about you and your life story
• Take home any of his drum sets (only one, but you can choose which one)
• Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool's Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while
• Josh will join your band for a month ... play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.
• If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4-day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
• Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here)
• If you don't live in Southern California (but are a U.S. resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks
• Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna

He may just be mocking the concept, but it's pretty amusing, and I'm sure plenty of fans will take him up on the lower level offerings, at least. Though, he may want to watch out. As Jill Sobule learned, even if she thought no one would take her up on the $10,000 option, someone did. For Josh, at $10,000, that would mean that someone gets to spend some time at Disneyland with Josh -- and then get to keep his Volvo station wagon (yup, that's what it says).

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