As promised, here’s the first installment of Marketing That Works – I am still editing details on some great campaigns submitted, but I’ll start the series with two suggestions – one basic, the other a little more advanced.  The first one is pretty simple, very 101, but needs to be put down as a rule.  Not as an absolute rule, but flexible:

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR MUSIC

If you’re a brand new band – give it all away, no questions asked.  Start with four songs on MySpace,  YouTube (even if it’s just posting music over a static image and lots of relevant tags), ReverbNation, your blog, wherever you can get a foot in the door, wherever you can view stats & capture info.  Register it with Tunecore so you can get it sold on Amazon & iTunes.  But DO NOT spend the money producing a CD until you start getting feedback, until you start getting an audience.

Burn some discs to sell at shows, but don’t go throwing down $2500 to master & press 500 units until anticipated demand justifies the expenditure.  Cover other people’s songs, post ‘em on YouTube & MySpace to build an audience.  Trickle out additional new songs online, find friends to make cheap videos (or seek out local / student directors on Vimeo), until you have an album’s worth of material.  Play locally constantly, tour regionally as you can afford to, keep girlfriend, because she is gonna be the one paying the rent and reaching out to blogs of interest while you make pizzas by day and practice by night.  Pray that iTunes picks your song as Free Download of the Week.

If you’ve established a following, released a record, sold a few copies, prepare album #2 – leak a track for the fans.  Post it to your site, post it to MySpace, pass it along to the blogs that supported you on the last go round.  But do NOT give up the single as the released track.  The giveaway track is the track you  show fans that you’re still down with the sound, that you thank them for their support.  Sacrifice fly.  If you think you can get something in return for that track, then ask for a retweet (using CultureJam) or an email address (using TopSpin).

Now the SINGLE is the one you sell, the one you take to radio, the one you pitch to music supervisors and ad agencies. If you’ve established a following and have a LOT of demand, then you release the single only with the pre-sale of the full-length.  And also offer the album with ticket purchase package. And if you’re big enough, create a special package for fans to get with purchase of the album, like the track-for-track commentary Rihanna did with iTunes.

Support with video footage for Amazon, full-length stream on MySpace the week before release, Spinner the week of release.  Work with Yahoo / CBS Radio, Clear Channel, PBS, and the usual suspects to make sure that each channel gets unique content.

But you knew all that stuff already right?  Good.

Now here’s one you may not have thought about much, because it requires some of that outside the box thinking – go where you are not.  Dig deeper into smaller, more passionate audiences.  Look at every site, every channel, and think about what you can do to appeal to that audience’s tastes, in THEIR language.

Case in point — Jason Feinberg of On Target Media used a site that I LOVE called Reddit to promote Steve Vai’s new live DVD. Headlines on Reddit appear as trending topics, whose order is based on the popularity as voted by its members.

A recent trend on Reddit’s community has been IAMA, in which users say what they are / what they do, and you can ask them ANYTHING. (I am a police informant, body piercer, I lost 30 pounds in 3 weeks, etc.).

With Steve Vai’s permission, On Target posted something along the lines of “IAMA Grammy Award winning career musician with 3 decades of experience. Ask me anything.”  Immediately the questions (and identity guesses) began, with some people getting close and others calling BS on the entire post. Jason funneled the best questions to Steve, he supplied the answers, Jason posted and monitored, repeating the process a few times.

Someone finally guessed it was Steve, and arguments broke out if it was him or not. Just as the entire thing was about to collapse (people began voting it down thinking they had been had), Steve took a picture of himself in the mirror holding up a note saying “Hey Reddit You Won.” Then the real madness began — people started commenting like crazy, voting up the post til it was #1 on both the section and the entire site! This also spawned a number of other posts which also quickly gained popularity, garnering over 1000 comments and a massive presence on the site for a few days.

The label and official sites saw a surge of traffic, Google search numbers went way up, email addresses were captured and DVDs were sold.  Eventually, Reddit pulled the thread and now disallows such stunts, but this is a great example of tailoring content to fit the community and engaging a niche to fire up awareness.  You can’t always get the front page of AOL / Yahoo / MSN / iTunes / Pitchfork, so always have an arsenal of ideas in your back packet to get the word out.

Out this week:  SPOON, RJD2, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK,
COLD WAR KIDS, EDITORS, EELS, SURFER BLOOD, AZIZ ANSARI, DAWN LANDES, GRETCHEN WILSON (hits).

Now go to the Tipsheet and support our sponsors — New Music Tipsheet is a free service brought to you by Sperry Media.  If the Tipsheet has helped your business profit, then support the Tipsheet with advertising, and support those companies that sponsor the Tipsheet.  New Music Tipsheet – accept no cheap imitations.

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The other night, I’m heading to The Roxy when I see a big ol’ bus sign for the new Courtney Cox series ‘Cougar Town,’ airing Wednesdays this fall on ABC. And so, they’ve got this 8′ x 3′ closeup of CC’s face (yeah, they used to call her CC back when she was growing up in Alabama, so I’m told), and I’m thinking, “Wow, what a wasted opportunity — with a show title like ‘Cougar Town,’ they could’ve showed a vampy picture of Courtney, and left enough space for fans to take their picture next to her, and posted their pix onto Facebook or Flickr!”

Instead, what do we get? A head shot begging to magic marker CC a good old-fashioned “balls on the chin” (don’t forget the eyepatch and the blackened teeth there, Picasso).

What I’m trying to illustrate is that these days nothing, and I mean nothing, should ever be created for single-use. With the viral capabilities of the web, every single piece created should be used and re-used to promote your product, from the album art to the t-shirt to the banner ad to the show itself.

This should be every manager’s most-often used question — “How else can we use this?”

Every single touch point for your artist should have a takeaway viral marketing aspect — single song streams should be embeddable, trackable; official pix & videos should have your URL in the bottom right; every show should have the band’s name in a backdrop or at least on the bass drum head; t-shirt designs should have the band’s name legible from a satellite, as well as have easter eggs hidden in the imagery.

As crass as it is, I’d have a kid dressed in Bowling 4 Soup’s “My Wena” (totally NSFW, btw) phallus costume, taking pictures at the merch booth with fans two hours before the show, and then letting the kids download the pix from the Bowling for Soup site in exchange for their email address!

Food for thought: The iPhone is the #1 camera used on Flickr; in 10 months, the iPhone will be the #1 camera used on YouTube. What are you doing to take advantage of this trend? You WANT your fans to take pictures & audio & video and pass it along to their friends. Not every show should be an aliens-and-confetti cannon extravaganza like the Flaming Lips, but give your fans something to talk about.

But speaking fan-to-fan, I’d be remiss in not saying this to EVERYBODY (I’ll admit, I’m just as guilty): you ain’t Scorsese, and this ain’t ‘The Last Waltz’. After the first two songs, quit taking pictures of you and your girlfriend in front of the stage.  Put down the camera, pick up the beer, and just enjoy the freakin’ show, okay?

Alright, enough of my yammering — go to the Tipsheet and support our sponsors. If you like what you see, pass this along, and follow us on Twitter and retweet as you wish. Hope to see you at Bandwidth or Outside Lands this week.

Out Tuesday: ARCTIC MONKEYS, COLBIE CAILLAT, IMOGEN HEAP, INGRID MICHAELSON, MATISYAHU, MEW, and WILLIE NELSON.

So, the busy season is almost upon us, where a whole slew of new releases fight for your attention between Labor Day and that all-important holiday sales season. Sadly, the bulk of releases will be looooong forgotten before Halloween even rolls around.

Have you dropped by your local newsstand lately to get a sense of all the artists vying to be on the dwindling number of magazines, fighting just to be one of the 800 other bands either interviewed, featured, or reviewed on the pages within?

How does a musician of any size gain traction in this overcrowded environment?

Easy – go where you are not.

Even as numerous magazines cease publication, there are still hundreds of titles out there that may fit a personal interest of yours, that may be a platform of exposure to people that share your non-music passions. Sure, if you can’t get the cover of Rolling Stone or Spin or Guitar World, then shoot for GQ, Fader, Nylon, or some other lifestyle magazine. But go beyond Bust or Tattoo and dig deeper. Music isn’t the only thing that’s long tail these days — there’s a magazine (or blog) out there for almost every special interest imaginable, and they could all benefit from a little star power.

Today’s world of direct fan engagement allows the artist to flesh out a personality well beyond your musical abilities. And tons of non-music related magazines and blogs are hungry for juicy content that can help grow their readership.

And that’s where you step in. Yeah, you want to do everything you can to get ink in what few music outlets remain, but at the same time, leverage your personal interests to gain traction outside of the music outlets, so that you stand out from the rest of the pack and develop a better relationship with new fans.

Like kittens? Approach Cat Fancy about doing a feature!

Refurbishing a house? Contact Dwell to do a feature!

Big knitter on the road? Hit up Make, yo!

Master chef? Talk about a special recipe with Rachel Ray!

Doing a big tour? Write an article about your favorite stops for a travel mag, and tape video diaries to post as a series on a their blog!

Like fishing? Make fishing videos like Ween did! Of course, it’s better to approach a video-savvy fishing magazine / blog to tape, edit, and post such a piece to their site instead of trying to build your own traffic — but if you shoot it yourself, you also have control of the final cut.

You should always communicate with your core and hope to gain followers by hitting up music blogs and other band sites, but stretch out, take a left turn, dig deeper into other areas — Family Handyman. Fit Pregnancy. Beadwork. Sunset. Road Bike. Alpacas. The list goes on & on.

A lot of magazines are starting to map out their fall & holiday issues. Start hitting them up NOW to make sure you are covered during fourth quarter – a lot of specialty magazines and blogs would LOVE to have a little star power to their outlet, so dig in! Just make sure every piece mentions you, your band, your newest album, and has a link to the destination of your choice.

(And yes, for the record I did see this morning’s WSJ article re: using contests & giveaways to boost Twitter subscriber numbers — worth reading, nice for a quick boost, but if handled improperly, could come at the cost of quality subscribers, muddies the waters with spammy tweets in trending charts, is ripe for abuse, and does not always focus on long-term growth. Rule #1 — ALWAYS proceed with respect.)