The Official Funky Management Blog Based in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, we are an artist management and representation company dedicated to discovering, developing and delivering exceptional talent to the world.
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In An Ideal World I Would Wake Up In The Morning To A Fresh Cup Of Hot Coffee. I Would Enjoy It As I
In an ideal world I would wake up in the morning to a fresh cup of hot coffee. I would enjoy it as I check my e-mail and skim social networks to check up on friends and my favorite bands.
I would immerse myself in an online community of music lovers, songwriters, and musicians sharing, caring, and building with each other… NOT blasting commands to “check out my new hottest thing”.
I see enough billboards on the interstate.
In this world:
Bands would stop acting like rock stars and start acting like leaders
They would build self-sustaining tribes
They would listen to their fans
They would understand that growing organically will always win over view counts
As a music blogger, my inbox would NOT be full of one-liners and YouTube links I only see as distractions. Whatever happened to “connecting” with someone?
Unfortunately, this world does not exist. From where I’m sitting, the average indie band sucks at using social media and its ruining it for everyone else. Most importantly, your potential fans.
What are we doing wrong, you say?
Oh boy…where do I begin?
Me, Me, Me Marketing
You might have been raised in a world of billboards and commercials, but using social media as a one way street is killing your promo game.
It seems too many people are missing the social half of the phrase, social media.
You need to engage with fans and listeners instead of blasting them with links, videos, and nonsense about buying your album.
Sadly, most bands qualify [as what the marketing world refers to] as spammers.
Engaging is easier than you think and should come naturally (assuming you are not a recluse).
Share albums, videos, and news about other music you enjoy or local bands you play with.Ask others what they think.
Share news related to the music industry or issues that reflect the personality of your band and use them to engage in conversation.
Instead of posting links to the same videos and songs repeatedly, post clips of the band working in the studio or upload a demo mix and allow fans to share their opinions so you can take the art to another level. Involve fans in your process(es).
Network with bands in other areas to create an atmosphere for gig swapping and collaboration as well as cross promotion of content.
This list goes on but the takeaway here is engage in a way that results in feedback and interaction.
Build a community.
Focusing on the wrong metrics
Your follower count means nothing unless you see conversions.
Huh?!
More important than a follower, view, or like:
How many fans have signed up for your mailing list?
Do you pass around a mailing list signup sheet at your show?
How many people have you met at shows? (You do hang out with the audience after the show…right?)
How many people have bought a CD or t-shirt?
Stop putting all your energy into increasing numbers on social sites and focus on converting the followers you have into loyal fans.
Use social media to funnel music listeners to your website where you attempt to convert them into a mailing list signup, song download, or merchandise sale.
Would you rather have 1,000 likes or 100 fans spending $1,000 on music, merch, show tickets and crowd funding campaigns?
Show me the money!
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chaquismaliq liked this · 12 years ago
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Hear that? On the radio? That slick, dreamy crooner dude, singing about how he's going out of his mind over that girl? Well, she's an animal — baby, it's in her nature. He used to play around with hearts that hastened at his call. But when he met that little girl, he knew that he would fall.
Wait a sec ... what song is this? Which dreamy dude is this? What year is this?
Perhaps it's the first week of August, 1958, when the top song in America was Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" — the first No. 1 song ever on the Billboard Hot 100. The week Billboardlaunched what would become the premier singles chart in America, the list was led by the smooth-as-milk Nelson, acting the part of a player who'd met his match—bewitched by a woman who, it turns out, is even faster than he is.
Fifty-five years later, to the week, we find the Hot 100 topped by "Blurred Lines," a ditty from the smooth-as-milk Robin Thicke. It's about a player who's ... bewitched by a woman who's faster than he is.
So, yeah, gender politics in pop music have scarcely evolved in a half-century—plus ça changeand all that. (Trust: 28-year-old Ricky Nelson had swag. If he'd known in 1958 what a music video was, he'd have shot one with ladies in various states of undress, too.)
The better question is this: How is it that, half a century later, we still follow a chart called the Hot 100 to measure which songs are dominating our earbuds, our streets, our beaches, our dancefloors, our American lives? We don't listen to transistor radios anymore, or buy seven-inch 45-RPM vinyl (not in quantity, anyway). Why is this chart still around?
The Hot 100 was designed to adapt. It's a voracious creature, built to absorb whatever medium is delivering music to the masses at any given time. It's not perfect — any chart where Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Missy Elliott peak only at No. 2 can't be — but this chart, designed for the music business and followed by pop nerds like me worldwide, is still the best benchmark we have to measure the bigness of hits.
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With the Grammys a few short weeks away, Billboard.biz has everything you need for music's biggest night (and week) -- analysis of all the major nominees, a letter from editorial director Bill Werde, behind the scenes with the telecast's longtime producer Ken Ehrlich and much, much more.