I Listen Hear : urban music

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Saturday, January 8, 2011

Music Marketing and Promotion 102

Posted By Musician Coaching

In Part 1 of this article I outlined the importance of having prepared properly for a new music release. This covers everything from having captured video, stills and writing about the making of your new music to making sure you have your social networks and website sorted so you have places where said footage can live and work to your advantage. I also neglected to mention that it is important that your bio, press clippings and photos are up to date at least several weeks if not months prior to your release date. Long story short – there is a ton of set up to do for any well marketed and promoted release and there are a ton of moving parts to keep your eyes on.

Yes, like a game of whack a mole. If you are releasing your record 100% on your own- chances are you are going to miss some of these metaphorical moles but I thought it would help if you at least knew them by name. An easy way for me to go over this believe it or not is to go over in very broad strokes the way record companies functioned around their releases over a decade ago. It is easier to break them down from their old terrestrial functions because the digital age has blurred the lines of what is PR vs. marketing vs. sales vs. anything else that moves the needle for an artist’s career. The solutions the different record label departments use today (and that you will use on your own) are very different than they were ten years ago but the needs that these departments addressed are still the same. You will note of course I am leaving out finance, business and legal, art, A&R – because they are slightly less applicable and there is no mention of a film and TV department or digital / online departments because ten years ago such departments were very tiny if they existed at all. They will be covered in a follow up article.

Meet the old moles:

Marketing:

It was the job of the marketing person to have relationships with various other entertainment entities and brands, to find interesting opportunities for their artists, to communicate with the band’s management and agent and make sure that all of the other departments at the label were performing their functions on a schedule that maximized the impact of everyone’s efforts.

Sales:

Sales departments at labels made sure..... this post is continued at

http://musiciancoaching.com/music-business/music-marketing-and-promotion-102/

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

MySpace Music Acquires Shuttered Imeem Music Service

ok so just this morning i was talking about myspace and how it tends to insist on itself with all its changes. It loses sight of what the brand is then they turn around and buy imeem (which is my favorite music sight!!!!) and thus further echoing my sentiment and to prove it here is the timeline on the messages with me not knowing that imeem had been bought. i think i know a little about this social networking stuff. ALso let me say that google wave will grow and in the next few years take the place of twitter.. and you heard it first here.
Maurice Nate Willis Since every1 has sent myspace to the social networking graveyard, how long b4 fb joins? Then twitter? will google wave b 4 the cool peps

Maurice Nate Willis Honestly myspaces biggest assets could be their weakness. The inablity to change without completely reforming user experience.

Maurice Nate Willis Does the same but not as brand conscious. although they have created the best user experience from taking from other SN they lost the brand

By Eliot Van Buskirk
December 8, 2009 |
1:53 pm |
Categories: Crowdsourcing, Media, Miscellaneous, Social Media,Startups

MySpace Music, a joint venture between MySpace and the major labels, completed a deal to acquire “certain assets” of the popular social networking site Imeem on Tuesday. Imeem is now offline. Various reports claimed the deal was done over the weekend, but MySpace Music CEO Owen Van Natta announced that the two companies only finalized the deal today.

So, what does MySpace Music have in store for imeem? According to Van Natta, MySpace Music plans to “leverage imeem’s industry leading technology” for starters, and “over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience.”

The entire imeem service has been removed from the internet, and its smartphone applications no longer function. According to two sources with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be named, imeem’s full-track-playback licenses essentially expired as a result of its inability to keep up with licensing payments, which apparently combined with a lawsuit from The Orchard (more on that below) forced the site’s sale to MySpace Music and near-simultaneous closure.

The imeem.com domain now redirects to MySpace Music, while links to some individual songs on imeem now redirect to their corresponding pages on MySpace’s recently-acquired iLike site (where, ironically, some of the songs come from MySpace competitor YouTube). Embedded imeem songs and playlists, including hundreds I have posted on Wired.com, no longer load at all. Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell, CTO Bryan Berg, COO Ali Aydar and VP of Sales David Wade have signed on to MySpace Music as consultants to “help manage this transition,” including porting imeem playlists over to MySpace Music, which has its own licensing agreements.

Of particular interest to MySpace Music — the ad-supported, on-demand music service not to be confused with MySpace’s band pages — are imeem’s 16 million worldwide users and its staff’s experience in building the first music service that allowed users to embed songs and playlists on third-party websites. MySpace Music also getsimeem’s SnoCap property — a large database of music, co-founded by Napster’s Shawn Fanning, that allows independent bands to sell music on imeem, MySpace and other sites through embeddable widgets.

You were fun while you lasted, imeem, rest in peace — although it looks like you’ll rest in pieces instead. Fans now have one less licensed music source.According to insiders, imeem, which was alreadystruggling to cover its music licensing fees in a weak advertising market, was brought to its knees by a lawsuit from independent music consortium The Orchard that accused imeem of playing TVT Records’ music without the proper licensing. The lawsuit asked for the maximum penalty of $150,000 per infringed song; imeem apparently thought it had a case, but lacked the funds to pursue it.