Photo: matthileo/flickr

“Why make your own website? You own it. You own the experience.” –Chris Vinson, Founder, Bandzoogle.

Since before you heard of Google, Chris Vinson has been designing musician websites. Like many today, he was in a band that needed a website. He did what anyone with enough determination would have done—he built it. 1000+ people were on his email list before email was a staple. Based on the success of his band’s site, he was later hired by his record label to build hundreds more. In 2004, he launched Bandzoogle—now a comprehensive, subscription, website platform for musicians.

“Decide an important action and encourage fans to do that action.”

Tracking website analytics for years, Vinson has concluded that “elaborate sites lose traffic.” Simple is better. Having a complicated, all-Flash website is self-defeating. “Flash sucks” was rule #1 in his 18-minute intensive at NMS about ‘how to make an artist website that rocks.’ He echoed these rules and really drove the idea of having exactly one concept per page. Have one call to action—e.g. ‘download this’ or ‘become a fan on Facebook.’

There are three phases according to Vinson: Attract fans from social networks a.k.a. “outposts.” Engage them with a “compelling fan experience.” Sell through simple calls to action. “Artist websites emphasize an artist’s own brand.” Make it personal. “Frequent updates = repeat visits.”

Bandzoogle founder Chris Vinson explains how to make an artist website that rocks. Photo: virtualmusictv/flickr

Brand isn’t something you sell. It’s not schilling other people’s products, and it’s not selling out. Brand is what you stand for.” –Liz Leahy, Co-Founder, Section 101.

What about fan mailing lists? What’s the right frequency? Ariel Hyatt suggests one email per month. Each should contain a single call to action—a different call to action each month. Disc Makers CEO Tony Van Veen said, “Retain mindshare. Don’t let them forget about you.” and “Add value in your communication.” Everything you do online is communication and should reflect your brand vision.

In a VideoSong

1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).

2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

VideoSong is medium defined by Jack Conte with those two rules. In addition to his solo production, Jack is the orchestration half of the indie music duo Pomplamoose, who chose video as their social medium of choice largely due to the magnetic attraction emitted by YouTube. They popularized their music on YouTube with videosong—a format that seemed functional and easy—and inspired viewers.

Last Friday, Kevin Breuner at CD Baby interviewed Jack Conte in DIY Musician Podcast #096. I recommend giving the full podcast a listen. Jack explained why he and Nataly chose to cover the songs that they did, and how it helped them become sustainable on mp3 downloads alone—covers and originals. Here are two excerpts from the podcast—the first is about the attraction to videosongs, and the second is about why Pomplamoose resisted record deals from all four major labels.

Want to get in on this action and try Sound Around free for three months? Well, you’re in the right place because we have a couple promo codes to dish out to bands. To be eligible to win one: Use your band’s twitter (or disqus) account to sign in below, leave a comment, and check “share on twitter.” You can check out band apps already built by Sound Around in the App Store.

What features would you want in your favorite band’s mobile app?

With the smartphones coming, and all these apps coming, the music business gets one more kick at the can, and I hope they don’t fight this one, because there’s a huge opportune to grow the business faster than what they’ve ever considered. I think there’s a huge sense of optimism for the first time in about five years that this business can actually grow. –Terry McBride in his 2009 interview with tech reporter Matt Hartley [video above].

Music is becoming more of a service than a product and Terry believes that in these digital times, context trumps content, access trumps ownership, and customer service is as important as ever. P2P filesharing should cease to be an issue as listeners increasingly prefer instant-access streams.

The second interview details the history of the Nettwerk Music Group as a DIY all-in-one company that developed by adapting to meet the needs of musicians and their fans. Towards the end he talks about joint ventures between musicians and non-music brands as being likely in the next five years.

I really think that the paradigm is shifting. I think within the next five years you’re going to have other brands inside the market signing artists. Brands will look at this going, well, we already use music within all of our TV, and radio, and, you know, internet media. Um, why don’t we just sign the artist? –Terry McBride, in his 2008 CMU-Tube interview [video below].

On my previous post, Musicians—Money Is Not Motivation, Dave MacDonald had commented that Terry McBride recently spoke positively about the music industry at TEDxVancouver in November 2009. That video isn’t available yet, but I hope they air it soon on TEDxTalks—I’ll keep you posted.

[homepage thumbnail photo: Flickr/stephen_dyrgas]

Science

In his above TED talk, Daniel Pink makes a strong case relating the science of motivation to creativity and business. The verdict is that money is not a primary motivator for people doing creative work. Sure, it does play a factor today as people need enough money to meet their essential needs. Once those needs are met, money is out of the picture. I look forward to reading his upcoming book, Drive.

Spotify

I felt compelled to deliver the point—money is not an artist’s true motivation—in response to the exorbitant editorial negativity surrounding yesterday’s news of Lady Gaga getting paid $167 for 1+ million Spotify streams. Where I live—in the US—Spotify is not yet available so I have not been able to try the platform. Spotify is a new service and its revenue model is understandably in a shakedown period where they are still determining what works, what data they have, and how they can best leverage that data to generate revenue.

Mr. Ek [Spotify CEO and Founder] revealed how the company has been working on making its advertising as personally tailored to an individual’s tastes as possible. “We have a lot of information about people. We know our users’ age, gender, location and even mood – which figure out by through BPMs [beats per minute],” he explained. Depending on whether a person has listened to lots of fast or slow music, Spotify is trying to make its mood analysis as accurate as possible – so it can serve highly targeted adverts for users to properly engage with—which should in turn, increase the amount it can charge brands to advertise on the platform. Mr. Ek said Spotify was “beginning to figure this stuff out”. (Spotify chief, Daniel Ek, rules out 2009 US launch | Telegraph)

It sounds like Spotify is on track to me. I like the ad-based model and there are many variations to explore. I brainstormed launching an ad-based free music service back in 2007, and I think Spotify is the closest service to what I would have done, but they’ll need to continue to evolve, as do musicians.

Whether it is really relevant to measure the success of Spotify in this way remains to be seen as it is still a service in it’s infancy. Much like Twitter, it is phenomenally successful in terms of usability but is still finding its feet in terms of making money. As it continues to attract users its appeal to advertisers will grow and so too will the financial returns. How this filters down to the individual artist is then probably more of an issue with the labels than with Spotify. (A Ga Ga approach to marketing? | The Naked Pheasant)

Industry

It’s smart business to think years down the road by expanding your fan base even if it doesn’t pay off immediately. I think Lady Gaga and many other artists see that. The long-term benefit of those 1+ million streams is immense, and I think many people are blinded to that fact—such a level of exposure leads to sellout shows and non-music revenue streams. The one thing I dislike about the situation is that the major labels still have major pull and they can afford huge production and marketing investments. But the need for heavy financing is down—thank you, Internet. In today’s connected, music-abundant world why does any one artist get so popular? Is it hard work, affinity, or talent? To me, talent is relative—it’s not what you can build, but rather it’s what you can build with what you have. It’s the Internet Age—indie musicians have the power to take the industry back but they must embrace change and creativity to do it—they must creatively leverage the internet and mobile apps.

The connection from the fan to the band, financially, has been broken. The fan knows that their purchase will hardly help the band, or more precisely that the marginal benefit from their purchase to the band is near zero, so why do it? The cost to the fan is much higher than the marginal benefit to the band, so the fan just torrents the damn song. (Why Music Is Broken – The Artist To Consumer Connection)

P2P rocks—it turned the industry up-side-down letting the label-lords know they had lost control. I see P2P as a massive benefit for musicians. Do they have P2P streaming yet? They will. With all that said, I believe that many music fans are as-motivated-as-ever to pay for music when they know their money is going directly to the artist. Maybe subscription services like Spotify can find a way to work this, or endorsement deals that fans would want to support, into their business model. I think that fans—and people in general—need to feel like they are part of something and they want to feel empowered.

Artwork: jahdakinebrah/flickr.

The fan artwork you see above is a creative visualization of Pink Floyd’s Money. The image squares depict the story of the song lyrics. What motivates you? What do you think motivates music fans?

Carey is pioneering a new business model for music. She’s cutting deals with the kind of partners musicians have traditionally shunned, pushing herself into new areas such as publishing, tourism and food and drink. … “A lot of big powerful music-industry executives made a giant mistake,” she says. “They gave the music business away on the internet. If they had just sat back and said, ‘Maybe let’s figure this internet thing out, it could be something cool,’ we could have found a way to distribute music online on our own terms, not somebody else’s. … Musicians have long promoted non-music products. The Rolling Stones marketed Windows 95 with Start Me Up. Michael Jackson did endless Pepsi promos. And rappers such as P Diddy and Jay-Z have moved on from name-checking other people’s fashion and luxury-goods brands in their songs to create their own brands, usually in partnership with their record labels, and promote them instead. But Carey is breaking new ground in three areas. Mariah Carey: The gloves are off | Times Online

The internet has leveled the playing field. It has proven that content is king, and that those who work hard at delivering content can build a following. Artists have channels with live streaming video content and direct connection with their fans through mobile applications. The same opportunities exist for everyone, and they’re almost all free. You may think that endorsements and partnerships are only for megastars—but I don’t. I believe that indie musicians with smaller niche fan bases can make the same types of product endorsement deals and partnerships with brands or services that the megastars can. The trick is finding the right brands and companies to match up with. But if you have—for example—a Ustream or YouTube channel that’s getting hundreds of views on a daily basis then I don’t think it would be hard to pitch to a company that relates to your audience. Ideally your audience would be a target market for the endorsed product or service. Think big but also think local.

flickr.com/photos/eyesofrc/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There is no single exact solution for indie artists, but the best solutions revolve around leveraging social media and video streaming to maximize fan engagement. Visual content is a must. Video content is supreme. YouTube serves well over 1 billion views per day. Live videos are easy to stream with ustream.tv, stickam.com, or justin.tv and a decent webcam. For recording non-live videos I recommend HD pocket cameras like the Zi6 or Zi8, or smartphones that enable mobile uploads like the iPhone. Video is becoming more interactive by the second and mobility is always important. Each musician has their own unique style and identifying that will help you see opportunities. Keep an open mind and be willing to adapt.

It seems that we truly are at the dawn of a new era. Opportunities abound at every corner. Music is more alive than ever, consumers listen to more music in more ways than ever thought possible, artists interact and build connections with fans in new and unique ways, music and other entertainment content can be delivered via multiple platforms for a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, and artists can form business relationships with many different partners—including consumer brands. (Music Branding Gets All Grown Up | Talent Zoo)

A lot of businesses still don’t get the internet, but a lot of them do—these are the ones that you can work with. Realize that a band’s physical merchandise is a product line, and there’s nothing stopping bands from partnering with companies to sell their own non-music products. Smart companies would likely jump at the chance to sponsor bands that have built active communities around the internet and are accessible via mobile phones. They see the meaning in social media—for business.

The types of products that will work for indie musician endorsements will vary greatly and be determined by each musician’s personal style or brand. A middle-man service that helps musicians match up with consumer brands and vice-versa might be viable—don’t you think? It would probably be pretty easy for Google, Facebook, or MySpace to implement such a service. However I’m a fan of DIY and I usually like to cut out middle-men. I think the best approach would be to directly contact companies that you’d like to partner with. Don’t be afraid to fail. You can’t get anywhere without trying things. Remember to focus on the dopeness—see Part 1: Music Dopeness and Bands as Brands.

Paramore.net is more than a website—it is a community and social network for Paramore fans. We need to see more music sites like this. Paramore fans can upload their own photos and videos to the site for everyone to view in an easily navigable fashion. Fans can connect with each other (and with the band) through the community, and they can subscribe to the fan club for exclusive content.

This video clip shows Paramore’s tight Monday night live TV performance on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Paramore’s third studio album Brand New Eyes was officially released this week. Rock.

Music SOTM Series: Do you know a band, DJ, or musician with an ace website? Please let us know: contact RVE and we’ll consider it for Music SOTM. Entries are based on interactive content, fan engagement, and mobility. Visit virtualmusic.tv/msotm/ to see more MSOTM artists.