A Better Strategy for Your Recordings
“People just don’t buy music (recordings) anymore. I poured my heart and soul into making this disk, along with a ton of money. But 2000 CDs (or whatever number) are collecting dust in my basement, and download sales are just as pathetic. The music business is completely broken!”
Now there’s a bitter cry of despair I’ve heard from many-a-musician.
My book The Savvy Musician, blog, and presentations often focus on this issue. A good start is better marketing. There’s a ton you can do that most musicians don’t.
But today I propose another solution…
What if “how can I sell more recordings?” is the wrong question altogether? What if you ask, instead, “how can I strategically give away 2000 recordings?” Or “how can I get 2000 people to actually listen?” Or—better yet—“how can I get 2000 people talking about my music?” If word-of-mouth were more powerful capital than money-from-sales, what would you do differently?
True, gifting 2000 recordings won’t bring in direct income. It may even put you further in the hole. But imagine if 2000 people had your recordings, listened, and were moved to discuss your work with their tribes? In fact, what if just 200 fans were moved to do that (10% of the 2000)? If you could get 200 people so excited about your work that they had no choice but to share it with others, can you imagine the opportunities that might be generated? New gigs. New tours. New sales. New income. New connections. New fans. New reputation. A viral sensation is born.
Sure, you’ve heard that giving away music helped generate heaps of cash and increased fame for Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and some other superstars. But can it really work for you, an up-and-coming-obscure-no-name-artist struggling to bring your career to the next level? I’d argue that, particularly in your circumstance, buzz may just be the most helpful outcome imaginable. Maybe even more valuable than for established artists.
Trying to squeeze out a few more recording sales is a short-term strategy. If you can accomplish that, great. But as long as that’s the ultimate goal, you’ll always come up short.
Instead, for today, don’t worry so much about selling. Instead, figure out what it will take to get people “gossiping” about your music, products, and brand. Even if that means paying to ship recordings yourself, and offering free downloads.
If you can get key influencers buzzing, I wager your luck will turn.
9 Responses to “A Better Strategy for Your Recordings”
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DAVID CUTLER balances a varied career as a jazz and classical composer, pianist, educator, arranger, conductor, collaborator, concert producer, author, consultant, speaker and advocate. Dr. Cutler teaches at Duquesne University, where he also serves as Coordinator of Music Entrepreneurship Studies.
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David, You are, of course, correct. An “unknown” artist hoping to generate meaningful revenue by selling recordings is only about 10 – 20 years too late.
Your suggestions make great sense. However, there are plenty of people out here already who are already doing this. The music world has become so bizarre that we have actually to compete to *give* our music away. Without a HIGHLY focused & targeted marketing plan, our free music will be lost in almost as much noise as that which we are trying to sell.
This is one reason why teaching is such a potentially important contributor to a musician’s income. Yes, one competes against other local musicians, but online instruction has — at least for now — not disrupted this still in-demand service.
Star Trek weenies will recall the “Kobiyashi Maru” — a no-win scenario that can only be bested by changing the rules.
And it never gets any easier.
I totally agree! I did something with my last CD called the “100 CD’s Project” where I left CD’s with notes on them all over the place as gifts to random people, and sent CD’s to my friends all around the world to do the same. It was a great way to get the music out and I was thrilled with the response.
You can read about it here:
http://oneworkingmusician.com/category/100-cds-project
Jason
I agree that it’s important to generate buzz, but I don’t think you specifically have to give away music.
You might need to give away something if you’re a new artist, but if you already have a tribe of true fans you don’t necessarily need to give anything away.
Unfortunately most people skip the whole building a fan base step. You can do this the old fashioned way (with shows) or you can start some sort of online deal where you interact and generate fans. Everyone get’s this equation in their head:
get good at (insert instrument) + make a cd = $$$
Art musician’s need to pay more attention to the whole techdirt formula
Connect w/ fans + reason to buy = $$$
Finally you assume in this post that money is the only thing of value one can trade. At this point in my career, I’d much rather have an email list subscriber than a customer. Why? Because getting an email give me the opportunity to interact with those casual fans in the long term.
I don’t think we should ever give our music away for free. But I do think that we can trade that music for something of more than equal value: permission to contact fans. Give away some physical copies if that’s your thing, but even in that case it’s pretty easy to get contact info.
“Thanks for coming out! I’ll tell you what, if you give me your name and email address and I’ll give a free CD. Just come see me after the concert,” says the performer. And there’s some great tech tools and other stuff to make this easier. But a good old pad and pend works fine too.
-CD
Jason, I know about your 100 CDs Project, so I guess your buzz really worked! We should talk some time. Maybe we can do a feature here so that The Savvy Musician crowd can learn about your exciting experiment.
Richard, my next move is researching Kobiyashi Maru. Don’t know if I should be proud or embarrased to not know that term:-)
Chris…My point here is that buzz is most important. The hierarchy from most to least desirable might look something like this:
1) buzz from a sale
2) buzz from a gift
3) no buzz from a sale
4) no buzz from a gift
5) CDs collecting dust in your basement
However, my thoughts on giving away music for free have changed quite a bit this week. Just read a great book called “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” by Chris Anderson. Highly recommended. He shows how giving things away for free has the potential to generate huge profits. If you have a chance to read it, let me know what you think!
Hey David,
Would love to chat! Shoot me an email and let’s find a time.
Cheers,
Jason
Great blog David, a friend mentioned it to me and I decided to come check you out. Looks like I have some reading ahead of me.
I released a self financed cd last year. As a guitarist playing music that is far from the mainstream, its been challenging getting my music out there. I try not to give cd’s away for free unless I know someone will really listen to it, or if its for a review or other promotional purposes.
I had 500 units of my cd pressed, planning to give away half and hopefully sell half. Any money I make will just go back into the next cd.
I look forward to reading more of your blog, and will have to check out the book.
Anton
Just a fast hello and also to thank you for discussing your ideas on this web page. I wound up in your weblog right after researching physical fitness connected issues on Yahoo… guess I lost track of what I had been performing! Anyway I’ll be back once again inside the potential to test out your blogposts down the road. Thanks!
You make some interesting points, it seems like today in order for your music to get noticed without major marketing or funding it has to be really good, or your live performance has to be really good(which depends on the quality of material, of course). As a songwriter/composer, I find that some of the music I make by myself is missing finesse in some areas; basslines can be a little more fluid, or midi drum tracks just sound lifeless compared to a real drummer. I think those things matter, because any extra energy you can add to a good song will give you an advantage when it comes to getting more people listening.
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