In the overpopulated world of modern music, where myspace alone has over 2 Million musicians pages. All with songs for streaming and the lines between majors, indies, 360 degree contracts, vanity labels, and everything in between, it has become a lottery ticket to get heard above the clutter. However good you are if you don’t get heard you won’t become popular.
Larry Schneiderman, VP OF Direct Response Advertising at Corinthian Media, is a believer in not simply streaming music, which figures, but Pandora, where you type in an artist in its search engine and it plays “radio lists” of similar artists.
In a world in which ipod shuffles exists simply to replay what you already know, I can see why Larry approves but not entirely.
Pandora can lead you to simliar artists and in that way at lease break em to you but is it enough?
Schneiderman has worked on selling music on television through mail order “Classic Rock” compiliations from Time/Life, as well as breaking the million selling Elvis Presley Greatest Hits back in the 70s and the Led Zeppelin greatest hits (which I worked for him on) in the 1990s.
In the fragmented marketplace, I believe a great way to generate interest in your band is still through TV advertising. A 15/15 split on local cable might be very cost effective for a touring rock band trying to fill 500 to 1000 size clubs and pushing a specific album (or, if sending the viewer back to the labels website) the entire catalogue.
While many indies are affiliated with majors, I still can’t see see why the indies wouldn’t embrace old fashioned TV marketing. I run a website and I have no doubt that the internet is nowhere near as effective as television. Get with it guys.