Know-How Exchange : Branding

Well.... It's either your time or your money. You can continue to spend your time working a more aggressive social media program to get out and keep promoting your site. There are way more sites out there than myspace. You also need to come out with some interesting content on why your site is the place to be.

Or...

You can spend your money and hire someone to help you.

It all depends on how quickly you want to get your site going. You could always do a combination of the two as well.

Just know that there are so many sites going up right now, just like yours (or somewhat similar), and they are thinking of the same thing. So whatever you do, you better be different and you better come strong or not at all.

Randall – what on earth is SBSWI? A Google search was utterly un-illuminating. In the UK SBS is for Special Boat Squadron, the naval version of the SAS and WI is the Women’s Institute who make Jam and sing Jerusalem. Whilst both of these are the possible solutions to the woes of the music industry, I don’t think that you had either in mind.

Now, Jonathon: The old music reselling model is nearly dead; courtesy of digital downloads and pent up anger from the buying public against the perceived profiteering of the record labels. I say perceived – in the UK it is real, our CD’s used to cost 100% more than in the states and that was for home-grown bands. As for illegal mp3 downloads – they are usually of such poor quality that they represent the same sort of threat to the original music as a cassette tape did to Vinyl LP’s. A bit hissy, but better than nothing until you can buy the album.

Now the model is all centred on free and legal downloads with more way out advertising ideas being toted to pay for the music (which people take to be for free these days) and low cost protected downloads. Those idiots at Qtrax did a lot of damage to credibility by announcing an advertising-paid download service before getting a single label to sign up to it! The labels are not yet that desperate. Look at EMI for example.

Actually, looking at EMI for guidance as to how you might proceed might seem like weird advice as EMI is so strongly associated with the old recording order, but the firm and it’s catalogue have been bought by Terra Firma, a venture capital outfit which Randall is probably familiar with (He moves in such places, just doesn’t smoke the cigars!) run by Terry Hands. Terry is hedges whizz and as such makes money out of leverage, financial innovation, anything new and sacking people.

He’s moving the power in EMI from the A&R men to the men in grey suits. He wants to make money and thinks that the artists should be part of the solution. He is seriously pissing off a lot of pampered stars and leaving a lot in the industry wondering where the new talent will be nurtured from if the likes of our Terry won’t invest in 100 Sid-Yobbo and the Vomit types to discover one worthwhile act.

And that’s probably where the Indies and their websites come in. No way is Mr Hands going to employ the creative machine that was the record industry – he’ll have loose and tough contracts with independent sites, bands and managements so that the risk is spread but when it comes to pushing the button, he’s still in control of the big-time. You can’t compete against the marketing dollars of the big boys when the bands hit the big time, but you can compete with their investment in time on behalf of the bands as they journey through the business with little appreciation.

You need some residual hook with the band to continue to profit from supporting their marketing if they get “signed” and you need to nurture these outfits and the relationship with the labels (I don’t know what we’ll call it in the future!)

It is probably your time and your ability to spread the marketing message over as many WOM portals as you can manage whilst offering interesting information and samples of music which will get you noticed, get your pages hit and make advertising look attractive.

Getting your readership up to attract advertisers, plonks you into a second changing model: How will websites create revenue streams now that advertising is up against so many other revenue channels?

I don’t know what the best mixture is, only that you should not base your operation on the singular and unusual success stories that the web has thrown up. Good bands seeking to emulate The Arctic Monkeys by having a web only promotional platform are as likely to fail as were good bands which never got noticed because their lead singer wasn’t sleeping with the A&R manager of the label! That’s the problem of trying to distil the essence of success from something unusual – it is probably partly down to chance.

You probably need to foster consumer interests via all the channels I’m no good at but at the same time foster the relationships with the music press and the record labels so that you are both a revenue earning site for yourself and Indy bands and a feeder site to the big-boys.

Perhaps I can contribute more when I know what the Special Boat Squadron’s Women’s Institute has got to do with it!

Steve Alker