Indie Artist X Project Wrap Up
Managing Editor at KnowTheMusicBiz.com and a Partner at The PlazaBridge Group.
Background:
About.com Music Careers, Artists
House Music, KnowTheMusicBiz.com, MusicianWages.com, Revolution Number 3
and Hypebot banded together to create a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy,
prioritization of tactics, easy to use tools, and a reasonable budget. It’s our hope that any hard
working, talented musician can utilize this plan to grow their fan base and
help lay the foundation for a sustainable career in music.
with one anonymous artist to design this music marketing plan then track and
report the actual results over a four month period (July – October 2009).
The group members were allowed to offer suggestions, advice and guidance to the
artist but were not permitted to do any actual work on the artist’s
behalf. During the project the artist had no record label, manager or booking
agent support and was solely responsible for doing all the work to implement
and maintain the marketing plan.
The Artist:
Austin Collins from Austin Collins and the Rainbirds is the artist who
anonymously participated in the Indie Artist X Project. Austin regularly
demonstrates many of the traits required to succeed as a modern indie artist.
Austin not only has the ability to write great songs and personally connect
with fans but he is also tech savvy, business smart and has an undeniable work
ethic.
As the IAXP was preparing to kick off Austin won the 2009
AirPlay
Direct “All Things Americana” artist contest. Austin is
using the $35,000 contest prize package to self release his third studio
record, due out in February 2010.
To learn how Austin originally got involved with in the
Indie Artist X Project check out this blog post.
Below
are a few of the statistics that were tracked during the 4 month project.
July | August | September | October | |
Total Website Visitors | 628 | 1189 | 1187 | 1134 |
Fan List | 739 | 760 | 774 | 786 |
BandMetrics | 183 | 233 | 241 | 244 |
see the complete project statistics check out the “Stats Summary”
tab of the publically available IAXP music marketing plan
document.
A Few IAXP Observations:
Like many
experiments this one was far from perfect. For example, we were not able to
successfully measure Austin’s distribution or direct sales. His previous
label only provides semi-annual reporting on distribution sales and failed to
provide the art files needed to setup direct CD or merchandise sales for Austin’s
new website store.
Touring really
makes a difference. Austin seems to have the ability to connect with fans
when he plays live. His email fan list and website traffic both see positive,
incremental growth when he tours. The flip side of this trend is that Austin
spent much of September and October writing and recording his new record and
less time playing live. The stats growth in both of those months slowed measurably.
Digital royalties
are anemic at best. Even though Austin writes his own songs, owns the
copyrights to his songs and has had thousands of plays on Last.FM, Pandora,
Imeem, etc. he has never had royalties reported or paid through Soundexchange. He
has only received two checks in the last four years from BMI. If there is ever
going to be a musician middle class digital royalties must be paid on a per play basis.
plan is no silver bullet. A solid music marketing plan is certainly helpful
but there is no single tool or approach that can guarantee a successful career
in music. Building a sustainable career in music these days takes a
considerable amount of time, an extraordinary amount of talent and hard work, a
“build one fan at a time” mentality and infinite patience.
Wrap Up:
Watching the many small successes and setbacks of a hard
working indie artist from the front row has certainly been a great learning
experience for everyone involved. Many thanks to Bruce @Hypebot, Andrew @Artistshouse,
Cameron @MusicianWages, Heather @About.com
MusicCareers , Martin Atkins, Katie and Joanna @RevolutionNumber3
and @AustinCollins for all their
hard work to pull the Indie Artist X Project together. – David Rose
Unfortunately, The majors will still control all of this for a very long time. They still control catalogue and as much as we would like to think that music has become niche, the ubiquitous bands will always get the large part of the actuarial produced pie. I, like most those that visit and interact on this site, would have loved to have read about a huge 2.0 success story here and take my hat off to those who were involved. Was this marketing plan ever published here or anywhere else? I would like to see it. I don’t doubt that sound exchange has never paid Austin. They were more than slow to pay my band any money for a long time, telling me that we had not reached the minimum for them to cut a check. Since we may never understand how the money from last fm etc. is broken down, an artist will never really know how much or how little the check will really be. Ever read an ASCAP statement?
Just re-read and got the link to the plan.
Hi Bruce. I’m just a little confused as to why this marketing plan was only set up for 4 months. Generally, most marketing efforts don’t see benefits until after 6 to 9 months. Obviously Austin has other things going on for him now, but I don’t think artists who attempt to customize this plan should switch directions after 4 months. Would you agree?
I didn’t control the process, but do agree that artist development is a much longer term project. In fact several members of the team continue to advise Austin.
That’s a Marketing Plan? No wonder the project was a flop – taking the ‘throw the mud against the wall’ approach – which this is, doesn’t give anyone any insight as to strengths or weaknesses. Engaging and empowering fans and finding new ones is critical to building a base, where is that in the plan?
Implementing a marketing plan and developing a fan base absolutely takes longer than four months! We limited the project to only four months so the fairly significant restrictions placed on Austin (a very limited monthly budget and no help executing marketing efforts, booking shows, etc.)didn’t limit his options for too long.
The IAXP was a pretty fun and interesting experiment but far from perfect. It was certainly not our intent to produce the definitive works on music marketing in the 21st century.
Hopefully an artist or two picked up a new idea at some point during the project that can help them connect with fans in a way they hadn’t considered or tried before.
Thanks again to everyone who followed along!
It amazes me that an artist with “1000’s of plays” on Last.FM has not seen a single check from Sound Exchange. Performance Right organizations are crucial for artist protection and fair treatment in their rights and diserved royalties. However, it’s all hype and hoax if the artist aren’t paid accordingly.
I support the PRO’s and their mission. Still, I encourage all indie artists to look at their play counts when possible. Once you’ve collected some data I’d recommend calling Sound Exchange and asking when they’ll be cutting the check. There needs to be more transparency and artist would benefit from actively engaging their pro to lobby for their own interests.
No wonder it failed. Tech-minded = disaster.
Bruce –
Perhaps David Rose & company should have chosen a brand new indie artist, to really gage the effectiveness..you also wouldnt have ran into the reporting problems due to the old label they went through.
Still, great insights and I appreciate you guys sharing this publicly.
– Danny
I am becoming more and more skeptical of the online only kind of approach.
IMHO, the Internet is mostly a “pull” medium with word of mouth being the only really effective “push” element to it. All the stuff you do on the Internet is for people who have already heard about you and want to learn more. It’s largely about keeping the fans you already have.
So an online focussed campaign for someone who is barely known seems to me to have low probability for effectiveness.
The only kind of online campaign that I could see working is one where you are so cutting edge in your online approach that you get talked about on blogs and news sites because of your unique approach to the Internet. But really, this is just the same old publicity stunt = media coverage tactic just in a new venue.
I think, unfortunately, that things haven’t really changed in that if you want serious quantities of eyeballs, you have to buy them. (Big dollar marketing campaigns)
The “marketing plan” posted above is really a philosophical statement written on a spreadsheet, and can’t really be referred to as a marketing plan.
Was there a real marketing plan, with a list of target partners, a breakdown of available digital assets to work with, and some realistic goals? And who was the individual responsible for making sure all the moving pieces actually moved?
This experiment seemed to prove how important it a role the “product manager” is in any marketing effort. You need someone driving marketing, being creative and busting balls every day. It is a dynamic process – if something isn’t working, you change it. If you see a spark of life, you follow thru. Was there a person in this project responsible for doing that? Marketing by committee doesn’t work it’s always 99% discussion, 1% follow thru. I joined Indie X’s Facebook page very early on, and didn’t see much if any activity on there.
If there was a more complete marketing plan please post it, it will make for a better discussion. No offense, but if I submitted the “marketing plan” above to any of the major labels where I was employed as a digital guy, I would have gotten my ass handed to me…….
This experiment seemed to prove how important it a role the “product manager” is in any marketing effort. You need someone driving marketing, being creative and busting balls every day.
This is the issue I have run into with artists. I have created plans and then personally done the work to make sure it happens. Effective PR, for example, is very time consuming. You need to make sure all events get to all the right media people and that all calendars are updated. The more a band tours, the more events you need to promote in more areas. And someone needs to be on top of all the emails and comments that come in from fans.
But as my time becomes more limited and I am now focusing on projects other than working with individual artists, I can’t do that anymore.
So while I can tell artists what they need to do to be successful, often they can’t or won’t put in the time. Therefore, success for them won’t be there. If I give them advice and if they pay me for it, but don’t take it, they will still likely blame me if they aren’t successful. If, on the other hand, I offer to take a percentage, none of us are going to get paid if someone doesn’t do the day-to-day work.
I’ve even tried to train some of their core fans to do some of this stuff, and their fans don’t understand the need, either. It’s pretty frustrating.
Success in music is time-consuming. There’s much more involved than just writing, recording, and performing music. Someone has to do all the other stuff. And either you find someone who is good at it and will do it for little or no money, or you need to find the money to pay someone to do it.