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Help Wanted: Patrons & Champions

IF NOT THE RECORD LABEL, WHO WILL HELP?

Several comments to my recent Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0 post suggested that an 11th issue facing indie musicians was to find a Patron. Readers pointed to the lean years that musicians suffer and the need for financial backers to help get through them.

It's not a new concept. The Medici family supported Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century  Recently artists like Jill Soluble have been asking fans to "invest" in a new album. Silicon Valley has "angel investors".

Money is essential; even if its a day job supporting nights making music. But in addition to Patrons, indie artists also need Champions -  a voice telling others how great you are.  A typical champion was once a a local DJ playing your tape, coaxing listeners to shows and handing your tape to a regional label rep. Champion 2.0 is more likely to be a writer who blogs about you, mentions you in his newspaper column and eventually submits review for national publication.  He talks you up to the indie labels who call and to his friends who are also writers and DJ's. You've go buzz.

If you've got the energy you can be your own Champion...

BoDeans Go D.I.Y. With Impressive Results

Roots-rockers the BoDeans have jumped on the D.I.Y. bandwagon with strong initial results. After nine records on various major and indie labels over 20 years, the  band decided to form their own label, He & He LP, to put out their new album "Still".

Released on March 4th, "Still" debuted in the Billboard Top 200 and at #30 on the Top Independent Albums chart. The record's first single, "Everyday," has also landed in the top 10 on the Americana charts, and is one of the top 3 most-added songs at Triple A radio. The band may have done it themselves, but their campaign is traditional including retailers like Best Buy and Target and  a six-week nationwide radio and retail promotion tour. An upcoming headlining tour will also support the album.

To "run" the label, the BoDeans have put together a team of indie firms like OarFin, Koch, Under The Radar, Songlines and Moxie Star to handle various aspects of distribution, radio promotion, publicity and marketing with the band itself in control. Other established artists like Over The Rhine and Michelle Shocked have chosen a similar team approach for their recent releases with impressive results.

SliceThePie Claims Will Finance More New UK Acts Than Major Labels In '08

It's a sad statement about the music industry when an upstart UK web site launches more new talent than three of the top four label groups in that country.

Slicethepie.com, a website that enables fans to run their own record label, estimates that over 30 unsigned artists will secure financing from fans and investors on the site in 2008. They claim that's more UK artists than EMI, Sony BMG or Warner Music achieved last year.

In the past six months, Slicethepie's music fans and investors have financed nine artists. Gilkicker, The Alps, The Skies and Miranda Barber are just some of the artists to share in the £150,000 raised so far by Slicethepie's music fans and investors.

New Label Models: Which Will Survive?

As CD sales and label profits tumble, a great deal of hope and excitement has been attached to a variety of new models:

• Music Is Free - And hope to make money elsewhere
• Name The Price - Radiohead asks the fans to pay whatever they want
• D.I.Y. - The artist is the label handling or hiring out distribution, marketing, etc.
• Label As Partner - Band delivers master and label does the rest sharing profits more equitably - often 50/50
• Ad Supported Releases - One-offs like Prince and the UK newspaper or Pennywise and MySpace
• Ad Supported Labels - The new RCRD LBL
• 360 Deals - The band as brand. Labels get a percentage of all revenue streams (albums, tours, merch, etc.) in exchange for longer term career investment
• The New Old Label - Keep costs down and hope to monetize across multiple revenue from downolads to ringtones to YouTube

Which model has the greatest chance of success?  Its far to early to tell, but several of the models above will probably find traction in the months and years ahead alongside new ones not yet imagined.

Instead of a single business model controlling an artist's career, wouldn't it be better if release methods become situational depending on genre, where an artist is in their career cycle and their goals for the release?  If a band is new or about to embark on a tour, perhaps giving it away (supported by ads or not) makes sense.   If you're a budding pop star in need of grooming and mainstream media, then the 360 deal may be for you.

Artist and fan empowerment is the mantra of Music 2.0.  Replacing the old model with a single new one serves no one but the gatekeeper.  Choice is freedom; and freedom leads to better music.

What label model(s) do you think will survive and thrive in the coming months?

Guitar Hero Proves Powerful Song Sales Tool

THE GAME JUST GOT A LOT MORE INTERESTING

Song inclusion in a popular video game may prove to be a powerful music revenue booster far beyond the royalties received from the game manufacturer.

The Soundscan numbers charted above by tech journal ars technica show a jump of as much as 140% in single track sales for several of the songs included in the new Guitar Hero III game. "No labels are really advertising their bands being in GH III, and even if they did most of the 'fans' already have a copy of the bands' most popular song before GH III came out," said one music industry insider.  "It's not far-fetched to assume that these are new people willing to pay for a new song."

All 100 Free & Affordable High & Low Tech Music Promotion Tips

After getting requests from readers, we've put all 100 Free & Affordable High & Low Tech Music Promotion Tips on a single page.  No more clicking around to view them 10 at a time. We've also updated some tips and added more links and a few bonus resources.

This is one of Hypebot's most popular posts ever and we encourage you to share it, link to it and add your own tips and comments. (here)

Prince And The Pirate Bay - A Litigation Fairytale

Continuing his crusade to control his own content, Prince is planning lawsuits against Bit-Torrent indexer Pirate Bay in the US, France (which has favorable copyright laws) and the notorious site's home country of Sweden. The lawsuits will extend to companies that advertise on Pirate Bay according to cNet.
Prince has hired John Giacobbi and Web Sheriff, a service that tries to protect against Internet piracy, to mount legal challenges against anyone who he believes has violated his copyrights. Most recently, Prince has also sued YouTube and sent notices to fan sites demanding that they not even use photos that he owns or controls.

COMMENTARY: The Dueling Masters Of Art & Commerce
Prince actions may seem excessive and futile to many, but they also point out a major twist in "the artist controlling his own destiny" trend.  Now when an artist feels wronged, not just by pirates but by anyone, he can no longer point fingers and demand action. In Music 2.0, the D.I.Y. artist must mount his own draining and expensive offensive.

Social Music Marketing - A Quick Handbook

Music Marketing 2.0 has not quite arrived, but it's clearly just around the corner.  Traditional media are being replaced as music promotion and discovery engines by a multitude of online media and person to person viral marketing. Nowhere are the changes happening faster for music marketers then in social networking. Here's an overview to help you keep up:

• The new Facebook Music initiative adds artists pages to create a hub for fan activity and new ad programs provide opportunities for cost effective targeted marketing to Facebook’s 50+ million regular users. (more)
• The current top destination for fans and marketers, MySpace, is launching a similar targeted ad program early next year. (more)
• Responding to the problem and time needed to keep so many different sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster and the widgets used on them updated:
• Google’s Open Social could solve the problem. MySpace, Friendster and others have signed on. (more)
• Facebook has not joined OpenSocial, but music discovery site iLike offers their own free service for joint iLike and Facebook updating. (more)
• Nimbit enables mp3, CD, ticket and merch sales on MySpace, Facebook and elsewhere from a single integrated widget.
• ReverbNation provides email sign-up, street teams and web promotion tools. A new addition allows multi-artist tracking.
• AristData offers simultaneous updating on your own web site, MySpace, PureVolume and VIRB and is building a network of music sites that automatically update together.

You'll find more guerrilla marketing ideas in our "100 Free & Affordable High & Low Tech Music Promotion Tips". And where is this all leading? We think its causing "The Rise Of The Musical Middle Class".

iLike Provides Details Of Expanded Cross-Platform Marketing Tools

UPDATED: Yesterday music-based social networker iLike made marketing music via a multitude of social network and web sites a lot easier with new services that enable single source updating.

• "pre-created" pages for 160,000+ artists, so that the artist doesn't have to go through the hassle of uploading all their content to create yet another new band profile
• opened a "Universal Artist Dashboard" so an artist can control their presence across many channels from single place - i.e post a new concert and reach fans across iLike.com, Facebook, iTunes/WMP desktops and thanks to Google's OpenSocial soon Bebo, orkut, MySpace, Friendster and scores of other sites
• launched new apps for Facebook Pages including Songs, Concerts,and iCast

Late yesterday, we asked iLike spokesperson Emily Glassman for more details:

Hypebot: When do you expect to add MySpace and other OpenSocial sites?
Glassman: Coming soon. We will make individual press announcements in the future, providing launch dates and more details.
Hypebot: What is the cost of The Dashboard to artists and labels?
Glassman: These services with remain free to artists and labels.
Glassman: "We’ve (also) started an autoupdate for all of our iTunes/Windows Media Player Sidebar users which will add an “Artists” tab to the Sidebar. This new functionality will display a users music newsfeed inside of their Sidebar, providing frequent bulletins about a user’s favorite artists...It’s a simple and convenient way to find out if an artist you like has added new tour dates, (etc)..."

iLike Adds Features To Streamline Social Music Marketing

SEE UPDATED STORY HERE.

Music-based social networker iLike just made marketing music via a multitude of web sites a lot easier and faster with new services that enable single source updating.