Chasing Bowie
A long time ago, I didn’t know who David Bowie was. I was young, foolish, and in 8th grade. Without a drivers license, and desperate to “spread my wings,” I learned how to navigate the subway…
Doing Business
The other day, I went to a grocery store. In an attempt to start eating healthier, I noticed they had wild-caught, Sockeye salmon from Alaska. Fish being healthy, and brain food, I decided that was going…
But Seriously Folks
Lately we’ve gotten a ton of calls from potential clients wanting to work with us. And there’s nothing we love more than clients who want to pay us tons of money. Unfortunately, client expectations often exceed…
Fun With Banking
I run a small business. I’m the owner of my small business. I deal with the day-to-day fun that comes with owning a small business. Today was a rare, red-letter day for running a small business….
Authenticity
I got into a pretty heavy “discussion” with a friend the other day. He works in content marketing, and his job is to create content around a brand that helps drive focus and awareness. Ultimately it’s…
Tits too.
Amanda “Fucking” Palmer raises over a million dollars on Kickstarter prompting her to scrawl the fact across her naked torso. There are her boobs for all to see. Oh, you rebel. Oh, you cutting edge, avant…
Good people
Last year, my company (D.I.-Why) sponsored the New Music Seminar. It was our first sponsorship ever as a company, and we were a bit nervous about what could happen. Having worked in multiple marketing departments over…
SXSWhatever
I held off on writing a SXSW post because everybody else is. Who wants to be a sheep, right? When March rolls around, every musician and music industry hack starts frothing at the mouth. SXSW is…
Sponsor me?
I’m gonna say it: I hate Kickstarter. I hate the fact that they make it easy for anyone to ask you for money. That’s not to say I’m a total Scrooge, but I keep getting hit…
Enough, ok?
Over the last few days, I’ve received 73 Facebook event invitations. It’s not because of my incredible popularity, subtle wit, or boyish charm that people want me at their event. Shocking, I know. Instead, they overutilize…
Uphill Both Ways
Within the last month, I’ve had two interns quit. As the lowest rung on the professional ladder, it’s not common for interns to be less than enthralled with the work they’re doing. But as companies continue…
Marketing by the numbers
Working with musicians, you hear a lot of “oh no, my fans would HATE that …” Venues do it too. And managers often assume an understanding of what their artists like or dislike. On nearly every…
Sometimes The Bear Eats You
Working in the music industry is kind of like living through a Homerian epic. There are heroes and enemies and epithets a-plenty. You also get introduced to the mighty beast known as hubris. You know the…
The Best Policy
There are times when it’s fun to be a dick. Maybe you’ve hard a really hard day; the man is beating you down. You gotta vent on someone, and that barista seems perfect to inflict rage…
What about Dispatch?
I spend a LOT of time at music industry events. And I spent a lot of time in college as a music business major. And I grew up in Boston. So when I see a band that’s doing everything the industry’s leading voices are recommending, I (at least…) pay attention. The bizarre twist is that NOBODY else is paying attention — except the fans!
Mr Nice Guy
Maybe it’s a character flaw, I’m not sure. But I want to be as nice to every client as I possibly can. Sometimes that results in over-promising, and most times it results in under-charging. As an…
Fuck the Cloud
So the whole industry is all abuzz about Google Music debuting. And for those that’re using Google Music, they’re not all that thrilled. It’s slow, clunky, and not exactly the Music 2.0/Next Phase/New Wave solution everybody was trumpeting from the rooftops. And so it goes. Once the music industry gives up on one problem, they just move onto another while forgetting to continue solving the previous one. That’s why I’m saying “fuck the cloud.”
Lipstick on the Pig
Here’s the deal folks: websites are instruments for your career. Like a fine Steinway or a vintage B3, simply posessing them doesn’t equate to being a virtuoso player…
Exit Strategy
In the process of starting D.I.-Why, I realized that bringing on investors might not be a bad idea. If you take a look at the companies shaping “the new music industry,” investors are heavily financing their…
Foursquare Etiquette
I resisted writing this post for a while, because I’m either gonna piss off a few people or (at best?) come off sounding all snooty and elitist. Finally though, that moment has passed. Foursquare is a…
Professionalism
It’s really not something that needs to be discussed, or at least that’s what I thought. When you’re working with a client/artist/musician/band/whatever, the asumption is that everyone involved will conduct themselves in a professional manner. Unfortunately, at 3 AM, this isn’t what happened…
If everybody is, then nobody is…
Business school grads make millions preying upon a ready group of suckers who sang lead in their high school musicals, but a decade later they’re just bartenders working for tips wondering why fame and fortune hasn’t smiled on them.
5 Words to Build a Career On
Looking back, I don’t think I said much of anything for the first 6 months I was working in radio. But I absorbed everything. Over time I learned how to be persuasive without being a bully. I learned when the end result often meant sacrificing what you thought (at the time) was totally essential.
The hardest lesson was learning to let others do their job so you can do yours.
Music’s biggest night?
Dear Neil:
I spent most of yesterday celebrating “Music’s Biggest Night†with a few thousand of my closest friends. As a member of the Recording Academy, it’s a singular thrill to be able to personally witness the hype machine ramp things up into frenzy of klieg lights and chaos.
But this year, moreso than the others, was it really music’s biggest night?
What am I paying you for?
For anyone that’s a marketing consultant, you know the three steps to discomfort…. You submit an invoice to a normally happy client. They come back to you with: “what have you done? Why am I paying…
Because it works
My computer is a few years old, and I was starting to panic. Should this computer die, I’m totally lost. My entire professional life (not to mention a lot of other stuff) resides inside it’s Apple-y…
Don’t Stand in Your Own Way
Over the weekend, I saw a very cool band play. At times, their shtick began to take away from their music. It was as if they had to make sure they got the gimmick represented at every opportunity…
It’s gonna happen, right?
So why hasn’t the band put it all back together, hit the road, and capitalized on the adulation? And why has Steve Perry remained suspiciously out of the limelight for so long? It makes a cynical marketing mind wonder how “planned” the spontaneous appearance at the Word Series truly was…
What Is and What Should Never Be
OK, so I stole this title from Led Zeppelin, but it’s really the best way to describe what’s going on in today’s music industry — and especially in its marketing. I’m amazed by the continual insistence on the “next big thing” being hyped long before the current big thing has been proven…
What if Gene Simmons was right?
Here in the new music industry, the paradigm is shifting. There’s a clear lack of synergy between the next-gen music makers and the major label gatekeepers. As a result, there’s a clear lack of revenue caused by and resulting from illegal file-sharing by the disenfranchised youth movement. While some may claim a certain Luddite pretense by those in control of the industry, it’s easier to claim that they’re disconnected and reluctant to embrace new technologies.
Maybe you’ve heard this bullshit before? I thought so.
Keep the Balance
I work a lot. Probably too much. That’s not to say I deserve pity or commendation. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to keep working than it is to just stop and relax. The vicious circle…
What should musicians pay for?
The big news perking through the indie music world is that Bandcamp will start charging musicians to provide free downloads. When you read a bit deeper, the company needs to cover the costs associated with providing…
Better marketing through Cheesecake…
Back in college I waited tables. I’m fairly certain it goes hand-in-hand with attending music school. One of those establishments was The Cheesecake Factory. Being there 40+ hours per week got you very familiar with the…
Dude, got any t-shirts? A lesson in creating merch…
I get asked a lot of questions, but lately this one has risen to the top: “Can you recommend a good/cheap/fast place to get shirts made?” Every single band feels that after they’ve recorded some tracks…
I love Rdio.
I wanted to come up with a more profound title, but I couldn’t. Although, a declaration of true love seems pretty emphatic, don’t you think? Staying up with the trends in the music industry is important…
Say what? Say how? Just say it?
I had an interesting conversation today. While the topics ran the gamut of marketing “disciplines,” the recurring concept being debated is that of appropriate voice. And I have to admit, the debate continued long after the…
Gotta be all Mr Smarty Pants…
The other day I accepted an offer to do a guest lecture at NYU. More specifically, it’s in the “Clive Davis Dept. of Recorded Music” of the Tisch School of the Arts. For me at least,…
I love Tom Silverman
While this might come across as something I’d carve into an oak tree during the last week of summer camp, it’s really more of a professional statement. In a recent Digital Music News post, I read…
The Summer’s Top Five Music Festivals
I’m a fan of lists. For no good reason I love hearing the best, worst, most likely to, or things you’d bring onto a desert island. It’s less about what’s on the list than it is…
Scott Feldman: Day in the Life
Here at Nimbit, we were challenged to come up with a 5 minute presentation on “a day in our life.” As a marketer, and someone just a bit on the competitive side, I wanted to do…
So, what’s new?
There’s a lotta folks talkin’ shit on the Interwebs, but often I wonder who’s actually DOING stuff. In other words, if you work in this industry, shouldn’t you actually be doing something instead of just pontificating…
Is TuneCore really a direct-to-fan solution?
Direct-to-Fan is the dominant trend in today’s music space. Whether it’s Trent Reznor telling us, or anyone else, the ability to engage with fans and provide unique, compelling offers is tantamount to success. What’s disturbing though, is that you’ve labeled Tunecore as a frontrunner in the direct-to-fan space. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What about MySpace?
As Facebook eats the lunch of just about every competitor, I have to wonder — what happened to MySpace? Are they the spurned middle child between Friendster and Facebook? Do they have a Jan Brady complex that causes them to sit in their bedroom dreaming up imaginary boyfriends?
Repost: Twitter isn’t “over,” I’m over it.
I was in the audience for John Mayer’s interview at last week’s ASCAP Expo in Los Angeles. And in his follow-up post, he challenges folks to respond, repost, and continue a conversation (in more than 140…
There should never be free music.
Anytime you give a track away, people should be buying it — and the currency of choice is an email address. Second to that, let them pay with a tweet, by becoming a Facebook fan, or creating a post about your music. Any of those currencies may actually be more valuable than the 99 cents they may (or may not!) want to spend.
I bought new music.
While I spend plenty on iTunes and AmazonMP3, there’s something to be said for the experience of seeking music out in the store, looking at the cover art, and waiting ’til you get it home to open, listen, and savor the music.
Beware! Beware! The Ides of March are upon us …
…and they’re singing “Vehicle” 🙂 The best-est part of working in radio was being able to play amazingly topical music. Specifically, March 15th meant the one time we got to play “Vehicle” by the Ides of…
I speak English good
In the process of creating some marketing collateral, I received the following piece of advice: “Don’t let grammar stand in your way.” I understand the concept — saying what you want is often more important than…
Food for thought – from your friends at the RIAA…
According to SoundScan, the top 10 albums in 2009 sold a total of 21 million copies, and the top 10 tracks totaled 36 million paid downloads. But the top 10 albums in 1999 totaled 55 million in sales. Even with digital track sales factored in, those top sellers fell by more than 50%…
Online Promotion 101
I spent a good portion of last week delivering guest lectures to the “Creative Promotion in New Media” classes at Berklee. For the class, I offered up some slides which helped explain both what marketing is…