Music marketing

[Traffic-Bug]

If I had a music piece to market, or lets assume I produce music tracks myself, what are the best options to monetize it? Lets say I would like to push samples or free tracks to people using ANY media player or ANY device, who have opted in to receive 'music notifications', then the listener chooses whether to listen to the track or not, to listen first the listener can do micro payment to get the rights unlocked (DRM), or can opt in to see/receive additional advertising offers from the artist to monetize the music. Or the listener can negotiate a best offer price with the artist directly, is this what is iTunes all about?

[David Hooper]

Have worked in this business since 1995...

You're going directly to the consumer market?

I'm not saying you can't reinvent the way music in consumed online, but as far as legal downloads, iTunes is king right now. You're talking about $.99 per song, which isn't much, so it's doubtful people are going to worry with negotiating with the artist or advertising to get around paying that, unless you can create a major shift in the way people think about buying music online. People have tried...

Of course, if you already have an audience for your music, you can sell it any way you want. Plenty of established artists are going directly to their fans.

If you have something set up, would love to take a look at it.

David

[malfumos]

I think you mus publish your music in mp3-codes.com to let people hear your music.

[kenj]

I would start with a Myspace profile with samples of your music on. If you want to keep the best arrangements for sale you can put up your demos and point people to your music for sale from this profile.

If you have no following then you need to create one. Once you have a following people will just keep on buying what you send.

[Andy1750]

Have you ever though about selling tracks for commercial use? People pay a fortune for these and you don't need to be well known. Only yesterday I spent $100 on 8 tracks which I can use on a Royalty free basis for my marketing videos. Try contacting some of the big sites to see whether they would be interested in working with you.

Don't know how easy it would be but Animoto also have backing music which can be added to their slide shows. Maybe you could also write to them?

Thanks,

Andy

[Mark Riddle]

Traffic Bug,

To give you a complete answer, there needs to be more definition of what you are really wanting to do.

The genre makes a difference as to marketability, and options that you have for profits.

Music, do you mean instrumentals?

Yes I make a nice little bit of change selling music for production, although I have a website where you can buy, that isn't the main source of income for those tracks.

David Hooper is understating his position in the music world.

He has tons of great resources that you can use that will help with what you are wanting to know.

Myspace is not the best place for music marketing, (if it really ever was)

Don't forget the popularity of Streaming Online Radio, right station with the right promotion, you can make a nice profit. (I'm personally involved in internet radio and can tell you that most artist haven't known how to include it in their promotion mix)

iTunes is no longer only $.99 and they have removed the DRM agreement so sharing is already showing up. (remember they are not MP3 tracks they are ACC, and fall through the cracks in sharing managment programs)

For success in selling music, you have to think like a marketer, not an artist.

Mark Riddle