Sign up now! Kurb Online Music Management Clients are Getting $US250 Worth of Free Advertising
Category: Music

Yes that's right.

When I'm talking to potential clients I always emphasize that it's not just the technology we have access to or our experience in digital and web 2.0 strategies.

It's that me and my team – yes, that's a team now as we welcome Altaf on board who will be our new specialist Myspace and Youtube promotions person, which means more time for me to work one on one with artists developing strategy and Altaf being the man who executes said strategies on Myspace and Youtube.

Of course further good news is that technical clouds we've endured attempting to launch our brand new artist community seem to be clearing, we've got Altaf on board taking care of Myspace and Youtube, The http://newmusicmarketing site should be launching in Beta next week SO . . .

If I were you I would get an email off to me at kurbpromo@gmail.com so we can start discussing your online strategy, pronto!

Packages that have just now reopened for the first time in 6 weeks start at

While we still have an ultra special starter pack deal for New Zealanders @

It'll be free for an initial trial period, and then be $US37 p/month from that point though I may consider a special $NZ37 rate for kiwi muso's.


If you are one of my clients expect an update in your email soon giving you instructions on how to grab your $250 worth of free facebook advertising, and an update on how things are getting moving again with our expanded staff and new artist community.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

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Branding your music and image to engage fans
Category: Music

Creating an attractive brand for your music is one of the most important marketing elements to help gain customers. A bland brand means no sales, and the wrong brand can be a disaster...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

With a great brand that fits your music image perfectly, your music image can soar.

But what is a good brand? Is it a nice website? Is it the level of quality in your music? Is it just a catchy name?

It's all that and more. It's everything from the logo on your website (you do have a website, right?) to the design of your CD to the values your music conveys. Brand is the perceived value and quality of you as an entertainer.

When you've branded well, you've created a remarkable and distinct image. It's memorable. It's easy to recognize. People know exactly what they get if they're into you – before they even decide they are.

Your brand should capture:

• The emotion people feel when they think of your music
• What they achieve from being a fan of your music
• The overall impression that your music projects

How to find the right brand for you

Capturing all of these impressions can seem daunting at first, but there are few tricks that make finding your brand a little easier. By answering some questions, you can gain direction towards a perfect fit:

• What feeling do you want people to have when they think of your music?
• Fill in the blank: A consumer thinking of your music should say, "Wow, these guys seem really…."
• What type of personality do you have? (E.g. Fun, quiet, casual, dedicated, curious, whimsical, scientific, etc)
• What values do you want your music to project?

The more you learn about what impressions you want to convey, what your business represents and who you are, the closer you come to building your brand.

A few examples...

Jessie produces and records her own electronic pop. She wants people to feel comfortable with her, not overwhelmed. She believes in helping other people and giving away lots of content so more fans can find out about her and enjoy her music. Jessie is a very friendly person, and she likes having fun. Her friends think she has lots of pizzaz too. Jessie wants to convey that high energy and fun-loving attitude to fans.

Jessie's brand is: Energized, helpful, friendly, and fun.

Here's another example:

Martha is an mature, experienced folk singer/songwriter. She likes intimate performances where she can connect people with the deep spiritual energy of her songs and playing. She's a kind, warm, caring woman, and she's always mothering people. She wants to provide meaningful an honest music, traditional, nostalgic and comforting and she loves for people to feel right at home at her gigs.

Martha's brand is: Warm, comforting, welcoming and caring.

It's all about emotion

Notice that much of building a brand has everything to do with emotion and very little to do with actual marketing. A good brand makes people feel something. It resonates with consumers on a deeper level beyond what they want to buy and the price they're going to pay.

Think about some big-name business brands, like Apple, Toyota, or Campbell's. When you think of one of the large brand-name corporations, what kind of feeling do you get? What do you think they stand for? What emotions do they convey? Every brand tries to represent a certain lifestyle or personality to resonate with targeted consumers.

And it works.

Once you've figured out your business identity and image, you can start creating marketing materials like a logo, a business card, and a website… All properly branded so you can achieve maximum success.

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Social media and your music: Online MUsic Promotion basics part 4
Category: Music

Alright it's time to get on with our "getting your head around the online promotion" series.

In the first three parts we looked at the basics and getting prepared. We talked about being ready to be patient and work steadily, we talked about getting your stuff ready, and we talked about the importance of words.

Part 1 is here:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/in-digital-we-trust-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion/

And part 2 is here

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/are-you-ready-getting-your-head-around-the-internet-digital-music-marketing-and-online-promotion-part-2/

And part 3:

http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/getting-your-head-around-digital-music-promotion-part-3-not-so-much-%e2%80%9cwho%e2%80%99s-going-to-direct-our-video%e2%80%9d-but-%e2%80%9cwho%e2%80%99s-going-to-write-our-blog%e2%80%9d/

Today we're really kicking this thing off.

So we've got all our digital cotent ready - it's time to get to some uploadin and some profile makin'.

Now you know I ALWAYS say your website is most important but that's going to need some proper attention in a whole other post coming up, because you must dedicate serious attention to your website as a place for doing business in the future, so you have to go about it sensibly.

But kicking off your social media promotions and building your network is easy and something you can and should get started with straight away.

Now there are many different types of social network sites so what I am identifying are all those sites where you can create an online profile for you or your music outside of your own website – on somebody else's website.

The sites I'm talking about today – and yes I mean myspace, facebook, youtube, etc. are social sites where large numbers of people are coming everyday to interact with content and each other, so it makes sense that you should give yourself the best opportunity you can to make this new media phenomenon work for you!

In one way you can think of these websites as channels – entertainment channels that you can participate in, just like your website is your own little channel, but when I'm talking about using these sites for promotion I often suggest these sites as "doorways" which lead back to your website where you're much better placed to create more valuable interactions based on the attention and connection you can create amongst your audience there.

So what you're doing here by joining and participating in these social media sites is opening up these channels, opening up these doorways back to your website by giving people are little taste and then gently guiding them towards a positive outcome – at first that will just simply be listening to the song and hearing the story of the musicians behind it, but then you will advance to providing value to a point that you can get an email address or you can succeed in encouraging visitors to download a song so they are at least taking something away from the interaction they've had with you.

Okay so setting up your profiles should be pretty straightforward because you've got everything ready:

Your mp3, your jpg, your video, your bio, so y'all just go ahead and upload them!

Myspace – artist sign up in the top right corner of the music section

Facebook – register as an individual, or a persona, then create a "facebook page".

Twitter – generating heat. Do as I say.

Now you see this is why I'm so excited about the artist community is because inside the community I can have a full and fully updated exhaustive list of all the social sites that are worth using and what to consider when doing so.

You see some sites are only worth doing – or particularly worth doing – if there's a certain vibe on the site for the style of music you do.

But all the big main ones should be covered, and I will also have plenty resources going into what to consider at each stage of developing each profile in relation to what platform you're using.

Here's my latest list of all the ones you should sign up for even if its just to make sure you get dibs on your user name or personalised URL.

Video: Youtube

Social Networking: Myspace, Facebook, Bebo,

Microblogging/Micronetworking: Twitter

Social Music sites: Last.fm, Reverbnation, Soundclick.com, mp3.com

Social Bookmarking: Stumbleupon

Socially organised information: Wikipedia, Squidoo

Blogs: Wordpress, Blogger

So signing up for all these sites will probably take a night or two, what's it supposed to do?

Well it's like this. You know that you have a website or at least that you should. It will most likely take a lot of hard work to build your website up . . . let me be straight up with you – like a year or something!

So let me mention it now unless it's not obvious - make sure your profile links back to your site!

But jumping on a social network site is you going to where there are already people hanging out cruising round looking to check something out and they're probably not going to come across your music otherwise unless you are where they are.

But it's just like any party, and the social web 2.0 is one big party. If you just stand there, no ones going to talk to you.

So first it's going to help if you look the part. You did upload all that stuff didn't you? The songs, the bio, the video, the pictures? It doesn't matter if your profile isn't all fancy because you're going to look like a half ass if you don't have everything looking like you've at least made an effort.

I'm going to have to keep the intricacies of profile presentation and specific techniques that we would use when working with clients on social accounts under wraps but I will stress –

This is web 2.0. And a social network is just like any party or gig, you can't just stand there, you've got to get involved, you've got to participate alongside those that you naturally affiliate with.

Facebook is a classic example because it's not as easy to engage as on myspace so you're best just to jump into the groups, jump into the forums, find where your communities are gathering on these sites.

Are they gathering around the profile of a similar higher profile artist?

Get in there! But you don't just walk up and say "I'm in a band!!! Check us out!!!"

Come on! At least try and be cool about it. You know how to be cool don't you?

Don't say "please check out our music."

If you don't know anything about profiting from interactions then you've got to realise that on social networks it's not about you.

Honestly. You've been to the parties, you don't want to be that guy going

"Yeah new album, new video, got a tour coming up, yeah working on (me), doing (me) it's a really amazing time (for me, me, me)

Web 2.0 is about them. It's about the user. Whether they want to participate in what you've got to offer is up to them.

And this is the whole thing, the whole chain you begin when you use social networks as a way to interact with new fans, in order to draw them in you've got to engage with them on their level. You've got to make it valuable for them – or why should they care?

A lot of bands give their music away free now, it's a reality. Just it being free is not remarkable in itself.

But the social network is often still the beginning of the mission, to draw them in from first contact, to get them to buy in enough to want to visit the website, sign up for the email, download the free song – that is everything because that is the beginning of the relationship between an artist and a fan.

Notice how I described visiting your site as a "buy in". That's because in digital entertainment attention is now the new economy, the relationship is the sale.

We can talk about social networking until the cows come how and surely in the

http://newmusicmarketing.com forum we will.

But next in the series is your website and building the artist-fan relationship into revenue there so lets get on to that!


.

Kurb is an online promotion company specializing in digital music marketing and artist management.

Follow our blog at http://musicmarketingblog.info for cutting edge web promotion as we launch http://newmusicmarketing.com - the exclusive artist community putting artists in control of their online promotion and revenue management.  

Within New Zealand we also provide low cost and hassle free CD DVD duplication and printing as well as poster design print and placement in Auckland.

3:47 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Long tail, flat tail, free tail - when will music be free?
Category: Music

The long tail is a term that describes the effect of a digital economy on the former impositions caused by actual physical retail stocks of products sucjh as books, CD's and DVD's that gave a lot of hope to the little guys in a new online marketplace.

But just recently there's been more discussion – a Harvard Business Review article suggests the long tail won't deliver a "music middle class" as described by hypebot:

http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/2007/10/the-rise-of-the.html

from http://www.coolfer.com

..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Anderson's theory of niche-over-mass culture is based upon the belief that the mere availability of niche products spells doom for hits. Given the choice, he argues throughout the book, people will make different purchases. Not only are CD sales down, he wrote, but customers are "losing their taste for the blockbuster hits." ..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

But consumers, Elberse has found, still opt for hits:

No matter how I slice and dice the customer base, customers give lower ratings to obscure titles. A balanced picture emerges of the impact of online channels on market demand: Hit products remain dominant, even among consumers who venture deep into the tail. Hit products are also liked better than obscure products. It is a myth that obscure books, films, and songs are treasured.

In the book, Anderson wrote that "we're seeing a shift from mass culture to massively parallel culture," or "millions of microcultures." But that doesn't appear to be the case. Mass culture is alive and well on the Internet. Consumers know the bad from the good. They know what's popular and they will gravitate towards the hits. Niches will continue to exist, and heavy users will continue to dabble in niches, but the level playing field of digital distribution isn't going to do away with mass culture.

from http://digitalaudioinsider.blogspot.com

Elberse touches on one of my pet themes -- that the ease of online distribution for virtually any piece of recorded music is resulting in increasingly fierce competition for the attention (and dollars) of listeners -- and provides some stats that spell out the improbability of meaningful digital sales for most "long tail" musicians:

"My research suggests that the tail is long and flat, and therefore that content providers will find it hard to profit much from it. It remains to be seen whether the new media environment will indeed make many previously unprofitable niche products profitable. Online channels lower the barriers to market entry for such products, and thus introduce the possibility of additional sales -- but they also lead to a flood of products all competing for consumers' attention. In my most recent correspondence with managers at Nielsen SoundScan, I learned that of the 3.9 million digital tracks sold in 2007 (the large majority for 99 cents each through Apple iTunes), an astonishing 24% sold only one copy, and 91% -- 3.6 million tracks -- sold fewer than 100 copies."

But over http://www.mediafuturist.com

A post  quoting the Long Tail's Chris Anderson on Prince's little experiment with the daily mail is used to once again highlight – forget the flat tail, it'a all about the free tail!

"He says:  "A) Prince spurred ticket sales. Strictly speaking, the artist lost money on the deal. He charged the Daily Mail a licensing fee of 36 cents a disc rather than his customary $2. But he more than made up the difference in ticket sales. The Purple One sold out 21 shows at London's 02 Arena in August, bringing him record concert revenue for the region. B) The Daily Mail boosted its brand. The freebie bumped up the newspaper's circulation 20 percent that day. That brought in extra revenue, but not enough to cover expenses. Still, Daily Mail execs consider the giveaway a success. Managing editor Stephen Miron says the gimmick worked editorially and financially: "Because we're pioneers, advertisers want to be with us..."

My own commentary is that we all know a single track is no longer worth 99c, I think it's time for the acceptance that recorded music is inevitably moving toward free and that that should inform the discussions on what our best efforts to realise the value created by music and musicians will lie in the not too distant future.

My feelings are that we are in a era of great opportunity for artists and we should reflect on where else creating value online and with digital products, services and partnerships has been already proven to be significantly profitable for creators, and the "free tail" methods being used to do so.

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Online Music Promotion Management: When Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

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Your signature is a great web 2.0 promotion tool
Category: Blogging

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Your signature is a great web 2.0 promotion tool
Category: Blogging

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Myspace launches kiwi hub
Category: MySpace

from http://undertheradar.co.nz

MySpace has further enhanced it localisation by serving up a NZ only portal entitled Kiwi Hub

Undertheradar are very excited to have partnered with MySpace to provide them with our Gig Guide.

This new section also offers latest NZ news, from NZHeral, blogs and other local areas with the aim to bring the NZ MySpace users to a central point for information.

http://www.MySpace.com/KiwiHub

9:18 PM - 0 Comments -