Recording - November 2010 - 55

Continued from page 52 Tony: And content—stuff on your website that actually has value. A download of something is great to capture that contact info. But if you want folks to stay and actually get some value, obviously, out of your communications, there’s got to be stuff of value that you are communicating. Bob: I’ve given this workshop called Octopus Marketing. And I used the term octopus, not because I like fish or seafood, but imagine an octopus: there’s a head in the middle, and there are all these tentacles reaching out. I firmly believe the best way to approach an Internet marketing strategy is to have the head of the octopus—and if you don’t like the squid reference, you can use a hub and a

Tony: My answer to that question would be that it doesn’t matter. I agree with Ariel that it’s unlikely that they would start charging. But there’s this pretty astounding phenomenon to me—having been in this industry for over 20 years—where, and I’m sure you’ve seen this, with sites like Jango and Slicethepie, which has a service called Sound Out, where they are making big bucks getting artists to pay to have people listen to their music. So what used to be illegal—which is called payola, actually still is—is on the Internet for certain companies and becoming a real business model, and, actually, artists are finding value. Like a company like Jango— and I don’t really have an opinion on them, good, bad or indifferent—but for 30 bucks they will get a thousand plays for you and

then people can then sign up. I think for 30 bucks, typically, some of their stats say you will generate and add maybe 15 to 20 fans to your list, people who can sign up to be your fan. So two bucks a fan, is that a good deal? I don’t think it’s too bad. It’s all a matter of, are you gonna get value for it? We all know if you want to make a living at something, make a career at something, you have to invest in your career. And this is just a different way of investing in your career, so long as you do it in a judicious way and you spend your money wisely. Dan: Terrific stuff, guys. On behalf of you all, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael Laskow and our friends at TAXI and our esteemed panelists. Love you guys.

“The beauty of RSS feeds is that you can take the feed from your blog and feed it into other sites and widgets, and so on.” –Bob Baker
spoke like a bicycle tire—but that hub in the middle should be your personal artist website—something that you control, you pay for, that you don’t have to worry about somebody else taking it away from you. All the tentacles or the spokes leading out is your presence on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, ReverbNation, you name it. And the spokes are two-way paths. You are simultaneously reaching out and contributing content and communicating in all these different places around the edges or at the ends of the tentacles, and you’re simultaneously luring people back to your home base. You’re filtering them to your home on the web where you don’t have all the other distractions. And that’s where you get them on your mailing list and establish that bond and that relationship there. If somebody asks if you have a website and you say, “Well, I have a MySpace profile,” you don’t have a website. Don’t rely on that, because they can take it away from you and not owe you anything. Just use them as channels to bring them back to your home. Ariel: Also Musicadium. I just came back from Australia, where they did a fantastic and interesting and amazing study of independent artists. It is now scientifically proven that artists that have their own dotcom websites are making more money than artists that are relying on MySpace. And that goes back to “Ain’t nobody at MySpace with their credit cards out.” So think about that.

http://www.reddecibelproductions.com http://www.adamwatts.com

Recording - November 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2010