Finding the fans in the digital age
Hello! How are you all? I hope you're well and gearing up for Christmas...ho,ho,ho and all that jingle merriment!
I've been meaning to write a new blog post for a while but I wasn't really sure on the best topic. I could have written about the great success of the label launch night, but surely everyone knows it was a storming night by now...I've not stopped talking about it! If you want to see just how great it was then I recommend you check out the wonderful photos which were taken by Danni Brooks, they capture the night perfectly!
What I actually want to talk about in this blog is a topic that is a big part of what I'm doing with the label; marketing, or more specifically the digital marketing of music. I'm lucky enough to be working with some great artists on the label; Rusty Boxx, Sound Menagerie, Tony Shevlin, Busking for Breakfast and Phil Jackson. I love the music these guys are creating, I love it enough to devote a lot of my time to promoting it via my growing list of contacts; from Bloggers to DJ's, pod-cast curators to Journalists and I'm pleased to say that it's beginning to pay off. "So what!" you might think "That's what you're supposed to do isn't it?".Well yes, it is but I wanted to talk, more specifically, about the shift I've noticed over the last couple of years in how we as consumers are digesting our music. This has really influenced the people and places I concentrate my promo activities on.
I'm not an idiot, I know that a new indie label with no great history is not going to get A-list play on Radio 1 or a front page article in the NME and their isn't much point me wasting my time trying. This doesn't bother me as you only need to glance at the info-graphic below to see that pod-casts, digital/on-line radio stations and streaming services is where growing numbers of music lovers are getting their audio fix (granted these figures are US centric but are just as legitimate across the UK and Europe).
I think it's a very exciting time to be promoting music because there's an ever growing array of resources out there that, while not considered 'the mainstream', are servicing tens of thousands of music fans with audio from around the world. The most important thing is that these fans are new music fans , predominantly looking for their next favourite band or song, not the Radio One listeners waiting to hear if the X-Factor single got to number 1....I know which audience I'd prefer a shot at!
Still not convinced? Well here are a few headlines you might want to consider if you're about to start marketing your latest masterpiece!
Digital radio revenue is growing faster than any other audio channel
40% of Americans listened to on-line radio over the last month
In 2012, Pandora listeners consumed 935,451 years of audio content
200+ Million devices running iOS6 are now one click from a podcast
Slate Magazine gets over 1 million podcast downloads per month
There's always been music fans out there, the key is understanding the best way to find them!
