Bandwidth Conference: Music + Technology

I attended the Bandwidth Conference in San Francisco last week where music industry people, from small label owners to PR types to technology developers, gathered to discuss the intersection of music and technology and its impact on the future of music and the industry.

One of the most interesting panels I watched was called "E-Merging Labels: The Shape of Things to Come." Moderated by Kimberly Chun of the SF Bay Guardian, the panel featured Ted Kartzman (RealNetworks), Tim Mitchell (IODA), Lydia Popvich (Quannum Projects), and Jeff Yasuda (Fuzz). The conversation revolved around new labels that are emerging in the digital music landscape and the kinds of marketing and promotions strategies they have to employ in order to survive and help artists succeed.

There are five main low-cost marketing strategies emerging that take advantage of technology; the efficacy of each depends on the desired outcome or the targeted audience. These strategies are:

1. Blogs: very quick word-of-mouth, rely on an audience that trusts the blogger's taste and recommendations.
2. Podcasting: the numbers are not as robust as people had hoped they would be, but it's still a low-cost distribution and promotional strategy.
3. Viral [music] Video: this has proven very successful, thanks to YouTube in particular.
4. Brute Force Guerrilla Marketing: the take-it-to-the-streets approach is hit-or-miss.
5. Widgets: perhaps the newest of the strategies, widgets are interesting but their ability to measure and track distribution is not quite there yet.

All of these strategies are invaluable to emerging labels because they cost little, are easy to use, and they provide very quick delivery. Instead of the classic label model, where 30% of the marketing budget goes to getting the music into large retail stores with the hopes of blockbuster sales, new labels are capitalizing on the speed of distribution with mobile phones and computers in order to use music as a promotional tool and cash in on merchandise and live music later. Labels often use free labor in the form of interns to push the music to the social networks and reach the "MySpace Generation." Commercial radio is an expensive gamble and the odds are not weighted in the favor of a new artist and is homogenous. Podcasting, webcasting, and Internet radio (if it can survive the new royalty rates) are the new radio.

Because so much of these marketing strategies depend on name recognition and word-of-mouth promotion, it's essential to create a brand for the band and the label. And due to the metrics applied to online music tools, labels are better able to judge what's working and what's not and adjust their strategy intelligently. They can also do leveled targeting for different audiences. For instance, if a band's core following reads the blogs, a label can push tracks to the blogs first and then decide who should be the next ring of targeted marketing and use the tool that they respond to best next.

From a business standpoint, labels of the future may adopt collapsed copyright, where the artist owns the copyright and publishing rights and the label or management works out distribution, performances, and other revenue streams, sharing revenue with the band. Within this system it's much easier for a song to be distributed as a ringtone or used for a film because the artist has final say on where it goes, not a bureaucratic publishing house or major label.

Lydia Popovich believes that "music culture is changing" and that the ease with which anyone can make, produce, and distribute music is "changing the way people appreciate music." In such a free-for-all landscape, a relationship with your audience and a strong brand for a band are essential for distinguishing quality from noise, figuratively speaking. While the major label system may remain for some time, it's clear that another model is emerging that will compete with and, potentially, break down the major label chokehold on music.   

Comments

[music technology]

This sounds like an interesting discussion; of the promotional methods mentioned here, I think the most successful so far (for independent labels) is the youtube approach. A viral video can bring in literally millions of views (a la OK Go)...