Tuesday, February 09, 2010

#blogchat 2-8 recap: Music Marketing via social media!

Last nite was another killer #blogchat, as the fantasmically amazing @misskatiemo joined us to discuss how artists can use social media to connect with their fans! Music marketing is one of my favorite topics, so I was thrilled to participate last nite. If you missed it, here is the transcript.

Some of the main points, and I've linked to their Twitter names so you can follow these smart peeps:

  • Musicians should connect with fans themselves, fans can tell if its the artist, or their publicist.
  • Fans love it when artists give them a 'behind the scenes' look at how they make music, their performances, secret shows, etc. Social media lets them pull back the curtain. @misskatiemo @krisis
  • Twitter is great for instant communication between artists and fans, blogs and Facebook allow for deeper connections and for the artists to share content in several forms. @grtaylor2 @kikilitalien
  • The end goal of social media usage for artists is to 'sell something', but artists need to understand that its a goal that will likely take some time to attain via SM. @misskatiemo @zzramesses
  • If artists acknowledge and engage fans, it means the fans will promote them to their friends, which creates more fans (Note: Companies can do this exact same thing by embracing their evangelists) @TMariePR
  • Fans enjoy reading tweets from artists, it shows them the artists are 'just like them'. @ICT_GURU
  • MySpace is now mostly used by labels, artists have moved on to other tools to interact with fans, for the most part @misskatiemo
  • @amandapalmer was told by label reps that SM wouldn't work for her. She famously made $11,000 in merchandise sales via Twitter in 2 hours. @krisis
Then, after about an hour of great conversation, something really cool happened. Arlene Wszalek (@Wzzy), who manages Tears for Fears co-founder @CurtSmith was participating, and many people were asking for success stories of how social media has helped artists connect with fans. So Arlene got in touch with Curt, and he joined #blogchat and spent about 30 minutes answering our questions! Please go check out all of his responses as it was truly fascinating to hear how Curt is using social media to connect with his fans, and also WHY he wants to connect with them.

Thanks to @misskatiemo and @curtsmith and everyone that made last nite's #blogchat another amazing event! We will again be on Monday nite next week (Because of Valentine's Day being on Sunday), and if you haven't already, please join the Facebook fan page for #blogchat!

7 comments:

John R. Sedivy said...

Concerning the comment about MySpace presently being used by the labels and the artists having moved on -- Where are the artists migrating to?

Unknown said...

Hey John. The believe was that artists have moved on from using myspace as a social media medium. it is now mostly a repository for songs/videos/dates. Artists are using facebook and twitter for their SM needs more.

Unknown said...

Mack,

Thank you again for inviting me to participate. The chat was full of a lot of amazing people, and I feel lucky to have been a part of it. Special thanks to Arlene and Curt as well!!!

Looking forward to the next one!

Katie

Mack Collier said...

John, I'm sorry, Corey has the answer for you ;) I know there were probably a dozen or so artists that were mentioned as doing well on Twitter, check the transcript!

bassmusic said...

@John,

as mentioned, myspace is still used by a lot of artists, not as a SM networking tool as such, but as a simple and free website - you can host your songs, concert dates, discography, bio etc, and it still has an important role to play there.

However, new alternatives are springing up. Very popular with the electronic music community is Soundcloud.com - I use these a lot, and even have one of their premium accounts - it's clean, fast, non-spammy and based entirely around music (with embeddable widgets/players) and also Bandcamp, since that also gives artists the chance to sell their tracks and merch easily... (and again, looks good and non-spammy)

Hubert said...

This was the first blogchat that I was able to make and I must say, it was GREAT!

In response to John's query, there are sites like ReverbNation and Fanbridge that provide specific music-centric tools for artists to connect them with (potential) fans. The coolest thing is that, much like Twitter and Facebook, most of the music-catering SM tools are free.

Bandcamp is an awesome resource for artists to create a virtual digital/physical music store. I recommend it to all my friends.

Marco M. said...

Interesting blog. With the increasing popularity of the online media and its positive results, more people are turning to online marketing techniques to build a strong business presence across the globe. I've written some posts on online music marketing. Please feel free to check them out here:
http://marketingcommunicationsblog.blogspot.com/