Marketing Strategies in the Music Industry:

Marketing Strategies in the Music Industry:

Online Music Services:

In today’s music industry, marketing investment falls particularly on the artist. What most companies aim to provide the artist with is an online marketing service where they can promote themselves and their music to their target audience. Additionally, it provides them with a business service, usually at a very reasonable price. In other words, what the artist ends up with is a team who have gained a lot of skills and qualities since working in this industry and is able to put this into practice by building the artist an online presence that will hopefully provide them with a descent income.

Furthermore, the online marketing service also covers other aspects of an artist online web page including a website, advertising, marketing, the company also arranges regular skype talks where both the artist and the manager can have a discussion about what the company aims to do to promote the artist and get them “out there.” They also discuss strategies such as whether they need a website to get fans interested in the artist and whether they can encourage the fans to sign up for newsletters. Perhaps, they want to start a viral promotion for their latest video so that they can constantly promote themselves to everyone. What is more, is that not only does the company help artists with their strategies, but they also help them with their content, their distribution and the promotion of that content to build fans interest and get those fans telling their friends and so on.

Other marketing strategies:

- Companies look at both the strengths and weaknesses of an act and then decide what can be done to strengthen the weaknesses they already have in an attempt to make sure that the artist receives the best opportunity for a major record deal. Most companies tend to look at these features before making a final decision, these being the strength of a recorded performance, strength of a live performance, visual appearance, originality, commercial value/marketability of act, attitude, personality and lastly song writing ability.

Usually the company will ask the artist to submit a demo disc, a current photograph (usually a full body shot and one facial close up, also known as head shot) and a brief biography discussing everything that the artist has done so far in relation to their musical background. If the company is impressed by the act then they set up an ‘in person interview’ to get a real feel for the act and discuss their potential and what they have to offer to the artist and what they can do in order to promote them. All companies want to be able to sell their artist too many different record companies and to the public. In addition, they also want to develop an original, brand new look and sound which is unique, marketable and fits the personality of the act.

Before the internet major companies were really the only ones who were able to afford and distribute their music artists globally. The costing for radio, TV, interviews and press advertising was a lot more expensive than people realised and not many companies were able to afford to market their artist through this particular marketing strategy. So many artists wanted to receive a record deal as they believed that this was the only way whereby they’d receive worldwide exposure, fame and of course fortune! Yet, since the internet and social networking sites came about this has completely changed the industry.

If an artist knows how to create a buzz around themselves or their band using social networking sites, such as myspace, this is usually when a major company or record company will start to become interested in them and will become exceedingly interested in their musical background. An artist usually needs to have their own social networking site, their own online CD/DVD distribution outlet and so on before they grab major company’s attention.

All in all, most marketing strategies follow the same guidelines, if an artist wants to become successful they need to create a buzz around their music, promote it to their audiences quickly and efficiently and you must know how to market, promote, and drive traffic to each and every single one of your websites so you can increase your fan base and grab attention from the general public.