March 2013
1 post
In Defense of Disaggregated Discovery
I took a poll the other day: “Do you feel like you have a music discovery problem?” 1/3 of respondents said yes, the other 2/3 said no. Honestly, I was expecting a stronger skew towards no, but I suppose we’ve been trained to expect a constant stream of new excitement, regardless of the medium.
Today, though, I want to make the case that content discovery is not a problem with a...
February 2013
1 post
The Evolution of (Music) Blogging & Journalism
My friend David published an interesting piece today titled “How Online Advertising Is Killing Music Journalism.” It has moments of sheer brilliance, including the title itself, which, he admits, is “just a catchy headline that assured I’d get a pageview.” He argues that our lust for pageviews, fueled by the promise of ad revenue, has devalued music journalism to a...
September 2012
1 post
The "Death" of the MP3 Music Blog
I stole this title from a story I saw tweeted several weeks ago. I don’t recall where. I apologize, and will attribute it properly if someone can point me in the right direction.
I’ve seen some alarmist posts lately, suggesting that music blogs as we know them may be in their waning years. It’s a fair question to bring up: in a world where music is streamed, rented, borrowed,...
August 2012
1 post
Apps: The New Billboards
There’s a long-standing mantra in advertising that you need to have people see or hear your brand in some capacity several times a day in order to achieve brand recognition. It’s the reason why billboards exist, and why you see Coke and Pepsi signs on restaurants and on high school scoreboards.
But momentum has shifted away from traditional advertising, as the return on those...
June 2012
3 posts
Experimentation In Higher Education
I went to my five year college reunion, and all I got was this stupid blog post. College is an important time in an ever-growing number of young peoples’ lives. It’s often the first time you move away from home. Sometimes it’s the first time you pay rent. More often than not, it’s the first time you take on debt. And almost always, it’s a huge growth period for social...
Do What Matters: Minimize Pop Culture
I’m often asked when I have time to sleep. It seems from the outside like my work and social lives are all-consuming and demanding of unimaginable hours. The truth is, they’re not. I think I’ve found an incredibly solid work/life balance, and generally get plenty of sleep (when I get less, it’s almost always my own fault). How? In large part, the key is a ruthless and...
The Societal Need For Creativity
I like email. Maybe not all the time, but as a medium, I really like it. Unfortunately sometimes that means I feel free to write at length to people who may have expected no response at all. I often think that those rants might be better suited for blog posts, so my poor friends can choose whether to be subjected to them or not. This blog is derived from last night’s email to my poor friend...
May 2012
1 post
April 2012
1 post
Building Communities Effectively
A recent entry into Instagram’s weekend hashtag contest #vacantplaces
One of the hottest jobs today is the Community Manager position. With the growth of social media in the last decade, more and more companies are realizing they need to have open relationships with their customers and fans.
Enter the Community Manager.
Right?
Maybe?
There’s an inherent problem for most...
October 2011
1 post
My Life Without Voicemail
It all started accidentally. I bought my first iPhone in January, and it was a lemon. I had to go back to the Apple Store a couple days after my initial purchase, and my pimpled male Genius was decidedly less interesting than the cute girl from Phoenix who sold me the dud. As a result, I was beyond the “ooo new cool toy!” phase and into the “jeez, this thing better just...
June 2011
1 post
How do new ideas catch your attention?
My good friend Anthony asked a great question yesterday: How do new ideas catch your attention? He jotted down some pretty spot-on answers, so I’ll try to word things a bit differently (and add one or two new things).
In no particular order, these are the questions I ask subconsciously when evaluating a new idea:
1. Does it make the customer happy?
This is what draws me to product as a...
May 2011
1 post
Recorded Music As A Commodity and The Implications
Let’s just admit it: recorded music is a commodity product. The abundance of recorded music now more than satiates the (plentiful) demand, and the market of recorded music is losing differentiation. Sure, different recordings will suit different needs and wants to some extent, but that’s no different from other commodities like coffee or petroleum or pharmaceuticals.
So what does...
March 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Soundtracking and the Future of Music Distribution
I got back from SXSW last week and started thinking back on the experience, and, being the nerd that I am, what apps I used. I hardly touched Twitter (not focused enough on people near me), I didn’t use Facebook (I hardly ever do), I didn’t open Yobongo (had enough people I already know to talk to). I had one Beluga pod going (never wound up seeing anyone in it), and one GroupMe group...
The Bandcamp Discovery Phenomenon
A discovery phenomenon has been creeping up amongst music bloggers lately: they’re digging through Bandcamp pages by clicking tags and exploring other artists with those tags. It’s a little bit like the MySpace phenomenon of a few years ago, where bloggers would discover new music by clicking through other bands’ Top 8 friends, but even less efficient (the Top 8 is almost an...
How To: Execute a Buy One Give One Campaign
In my last post, I talked about the Buy One Give One campaign I ran with All Smiles. Several folks have asked me to open source my code, and I’m more than happy to oblige. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Set up your offer page with Topspin purchase buttons
Pretty straightforward, and starting next week everyone will be able to use Topspin.
2. Add a Topspin API call to listen for the...
Buy One Give One
A few months ago, George Howard blogged about a great idea for artists trying to get their word out: offer your fans the option to send a free copy of the record to a friend when they buy a copy for themselves. It’s a great way to offer your fans additional social capital (by sending a copy of a great record to a friend) while helping the artist get introduced to new people.
I took this...
February 2011
1 post
WatchThese are the slides from my presentation at New Music Seminar LA yesterday. The later slides should be pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a (very) rough transcript (ok, first draft I wrote) through the first parts. I’m told there’s video coming…
I’m here today to tell you a story about how Facebook Ads changed an artist’s career. As a bit of background, I am a data nerd...
January 2011
3 posts
Largely Unsolicited Advice for Entering the Music...
Being a driven, moderately successful twenty-something in a generation that rarely decides what they want to do with their life before our counterparts from previous generations were married with children, I get approached fairly regularly by my peers and their siblings who are interested in getting into the music business. I’ve written long emails, waxed prophetic over adult beverages, and...
5 tags
Using Blogger Motivations to Drive Fan Connections
I was reading David’s post on “Music Blogging in 2011” and was especially moved by the comments. Dozens of bloggers chimed in with their viewpoints on blogging, and, most importantly, their own motivations for blogging.
I’ve written before on constructing personas for bloggers, but I think it’s worth looking at the personas in a different light: motivations. Most...
5 tags
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Clicks
For three weeks in December, Jim from All Smiles sent out similar emails — all had the same components:
- Update on recording/mixing
- Plea for support on Kickstarter
- A download of two new instrumental tracks
The emails we’re performing consistently, and not terribly from a statistical perspective:
- Average open rate: 24.5%
- Average clicks: 312
- Average CTR (clicks/opens):...
November 2010
2 posts
Learning From Facebook Ad Failures
As with most folks who work in the tech business, I think it’s important to celebrate failures — they often teach us more than success. As such, I wanted to share a few Facebook Ads campaigns I experimented with and why they didn’t work.
The question I wanted to answer after the almost-too-easy success with the All Smiles campaign was “How easy is it to convert fans of...
Why Ticket Fees Will Die
Bob Lefsetz wrote a characteristically verbose and largely accurate response to the Edison Research study. He’s right that Ticketmaster is paid to be hated, and that many acts are overcharging for tickets and touring too much for any one show to feel as special. Where he falls short, however, is in assuming the current state of affairs in the ticketing business applies to the future.
If we...
October 2010
1 post
A Difference of Opinion: Sports vs Music Ticketing...
I saw a tweet from Scott Perry yesterday with a quote from Digital Music Forum West:
@scottperry paperless tkts restrict fans’ rights to resell. reselling in sports is accepted, yet in concerts is stigmatized. #dmfw
That fact is not without reason. That reason is the contract structure and the notion of who owns the fan relationship.
In sports, the team generally manages their own...
September 2010
8 posts
The New PR, pt. 3: Leveraging Network Effects, or...
So far this week we’ve talked about the importance of tastemaking and genuine, targeted communication in modern PR. We also discussed one way in which to adapt to the new PR business by making pitches personal and genuine.
The second new approach in PR is to leverage network effects that already exist. Everyone wants to “go viral.” If fewer than 10% of posts come from PR, that...
The New PR, pt. 2: The Importance of Genuine,...
One of the most important parts of being a tastemaker, and one that’s highly undervalued, is the ability to communicate with your audience. It’s no wonder that your stereotypical blogger is an English major (and no, not just because they’re unemployed) — the best communicators are the best leaders of tribes. The most successful tastemakers, however, are also those who also...
The New PR, pt. 1: The Importance of Tastemaking
I’ve talked several times before about the need for everyone to be a tastemaker and the importance of being genuine, but I think it’s worth revisiting.
Tastemaking is the biggest opportunity that’s available to everybody — building an audience that trusts you to bring them the highest quality content can empower any business to do remarkable things. In the PR space, this...
Success with Facebook Ads, pt. 4: CPC vs CPM
The most common question I’ve gotten since my posts a couple weeks ago about Facebook ads is making the decision between CPM (paying per thousand times the ad is displayed) and CPC (paying per time the ad is clicked). For me, it was an obvious choice — we had a specific conversion metric we were trying to optimize, and clicks got us closer to being able to do so. In other words, we...
Constructing Personas: Get Inside the Blogger's...
In the product world of tech companies, as with most marketing departments and agencies, we spend a lot of time creating personas (fictional characters that embody the characteristics prevalent in a given group) for our target audiences. We take time to interview the people we want to use our product and shadow them as they do the tasks that our product might help them do better. The more people...
1 tag
Success with Facebook Ads, pt. 3: Execution &...
Once you have your creative, budget, targets, and landing page nailed, it’s time to launch your campaign. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty on execution because it’s very straightforward if you have prepared properly.
The fun part for data nerds is the optimization. It’s easy to assume that Facebook’s algorithms are doing their jobs as well as possible, but...
1 tag
Success with Facebook Ads, pt. 2: Preparations
In keeping with the Facebook Ad theme this week, I’d like to dive into the key components you’ll want to have prepared before launching a campaign:
1. Creative
If you’re a Mad Men fan, you’ll see them testing several different creatives at various points prior to launching a campaign — they’ll ask each others’ opinions, do focus groups, present...
1 tag
Success with Facebook Ads, pt. 1: Rules of...
First off, thanks to everyone for the positive response to yesterday’s post on the Facebook Ad success with All Smiles! I got a plethora of calls, emails, txts, and tweets (though strangely no comments on the post itself) about it, and I’m so glad everyone has taken interest. What became evident, though, was the need for me to articulate how to get value from Facebook ads a little more...
August 2010
7 posts
1 tag
Finding 5,000 Fans Under Your Nose: A Case for...
One of the biggest challenges a music marketer faces is selecting a channel (or multiple channels) to focus their efforts on. More than anything, this means researching and understanding the ways existing and potential fans discover and consume music.
In the case of a young, hip band like A B & The Sea, it was clearly the social channels — with a product that is almost universally...
Tastemakers In A Trust Economy
One of the biggest reasons people worry about the future of the music business is because they don’t understand the new value chains, often rightfully so as there’s a lot yet to define. One part of the chain that is starting to be defined but isn’t widely understood is the role of the tastemaker. I’ve talked about the tastemakers before, but as the trust economy grows, so...
Welcome
Welcome to the new home of my rants! I stopped blogging actively a while back and realized that a big reason was having to deal with Blogger — the most painful blogging platform on earth. In a moment of frustration, I tried to switch over to WordPress, but had issues importing past posts and embedding OpenTape widgets. After giving up there, I started a Tumblr, but that wound up being a far...
Band PR 101: How to get covered by music blogs
This post is a re-post from August 16th, 2010. These first few posts are just to populate the new blog with some relevant past content.
I’m in a bit of a unique position as both a marketer and music blogger, but I hope (and expect) more marketers will follow my lead — blogging about your favorite music is a great way to build brand identity, introduce yourself and your brand to your...
Zero to 1,000 Fans in Under Two Months
This post is a re-post from April 22nd, 2010. These first few posts are just to populate the new blog with some relevant past content.
My not-so-secret passion has always been helping emerging artists grow their fan bases and make a living making music. A few months ago, I was presented with a fantastic opportunity to do just that. My friend Steve invited me to his office at Different Fur...
The Music Data Problem
This post is a re-post from October 21st, 2009. These first few posts are just to populate the new blog with some relevant past content.
John Loken’s blog post a couple weeks back got me thinking about a post I’ve been meaning to do for months, but have been too swamped to actually spit out. The post, titled “More Metrics Please,” is, as the title suggests, a plea for metrics on par with the TV...
Free Is Not Enough
This post is a re-post from July 9, 2009. These first few posts are just to populate the new blog with some relevant past content.
There’s been a great deal of debate lately around the Freemium business model that Fred Wilson helped describe (and a commenter helped name). Many take it as an inevitability, others as a bogus anddestructive force. I’m a believer, personally, but I also...
