It Takes A village to Market Music!

If you are reading this I am sure you are like me and so many other musicians, artists, labels, groups, and individuals trying to market their music. You are looking for that magic trick that will help you get ahead of the competition, quit your day job to make your living solely with music, or get your music in the hands of more potential fans faster! You work hard everyday - everyday! - but it never seems to be enough. Each day you find new ways or ideas to market your music, but since you are already working and doing everything you can to keep up with your current methods, these new ideas only get added to the list of “to do” items and it seems you never “get around” to taking the action needed.... and you know if you at least tried these new ideas they would give you what you have been looking for... more CD sales, faster “adds” at radio, and tons more fans listening to your music!

I have learned that marketing music is not a singular action. It is not something you can do alone unless you are independently wealthy and can spend 18 hours a day, everyday, just marketing your music. Sure, going it alone can make a difference and over time, working diligently, you will gain new fans one by one resulting in a great career built on determination, hard work, and sheer guts. But, if you are like me, the “over time” part of that statement simply sucks! “Over time” means you are still working a day job, playing only a hand full of gigs each year, and you still are not hearing your music on the radio! It means you are beating your head against a wall everyday trying to decide what music marketing strategies you can do, alone, to gain the most fans. I have  learned that “alone” and “most fans” do not go together very well. It takes a village to market music.

Who is in your village? When I started out in the business of music I thought I was alone. My band didn’t seem to have the drive to help, I didn’t think my friends and family could do anything but show up at shows to cheer for me, and I sure didn’t have the money to hire a professional marketing company. I thought I didn’t have a village. What I have learned in the past twenty years is that I had a village. It was all around me. My village was my band, my friends, and my family. What I didn’t have was the ability or knowledge to activate my village. I thought I had to do everything alone to make sure it was done right. I thought that anyone helping me had to know everything I did about marketing music to be able to help at all!

NASA sends a shuttle into space that has over a million working parts. I am sure that the guy who builds the toilet has no clue how the guidance system works and that the girl who builds the seats has no clue how the oxygen system works. But somehow, with all these different people working on a huge machine without the full knowledge of the shuttle’s inner workings, it makes it to space and returns home safely. Not every time, unfortunately there are mishaps, but for the most part the shuttle does what it was built to do and it was made possible by many, many different people that simply had no clue as to how each piece of machinery worked other than their own creations.

Like the space shuttle, there are many working parts to a successful music marketing campaign and it takes an entire village to build the machine that markets the music. I have learned that the person who sends out emails does not have to know how to talk to radio program directors and that the person who creates a flyer does not have to know how to play the guitar. Your village is made up of everyone you know. It is all around you waiting for direction. Looking back, as hind sight is 20/20, I can now see that it wasn’t that my band didn’t want to market the music, we dreamed together about it all the time, it was that they didn’t know how or what to do. If I would have given each of them a specific job or role they would have done it. Well, ok, the bass player was pretty lazy and he might not have put down the atari 2600 controller long enough to do anything, but if I would have given him a job and he didn’t do it I would have known I needed a new bass player that wanted to further his and my career much sooner! My father was a high school wrestling coach. He didn’t like my style of music, but If I would have asked him who the popular kids in the school were I could have talked to them and got them to pass out flyers around the school promoting my band. Yes, I am going way back, but you get the point! My village was huge. I had massive resources all around me that I thought couldn’t help me because they “didn’t get it!” They didn’t know anything about marketing music. My dad was a jock, he didn’t know a guitar from a bass guitar, but he did know all the kids in the school. He could have been a huge player in my music marketing village.

I have learned that when you begin to market your music you have to use any and all resources you have at your disposal. This means using your father, the wrestling coach, to get to the high school kids. This means using your mom, who is a receptionist at a warehouse, to give the dock workers a copy of your music. This means using your band to tell each of their friends about an upcoming show. It means you use the village you have around you right now. These people may not be the people who will make up your final music marketing village. These are the people who will help you find those “diamonds in the ruff” that want to be a part of your village. Think of it this way; If you give your dad, mom, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, and five of your non musical friends each ten fliers and tell them to give them to their friends you have just passed out 111 fliers in less time than it took you to read this sentence. How? Because if each of the people listed, eleven of them, are given 10 fliers to pass out that equals 111 fliers given to people you might not have ever seen or met on your own. Now, these people might not know your “typical fan” but if only 1 person shows up to your show that really likes your music, you gained a new fan in less than ten seconds. This new fan might be motivated enough to be a part of your village and start passing out fliers to their friends and family. How long would it take you to pass out 111 fliers on your own?

Take a look around. Who is in your village now? Let me give you another example to really drive it home. Let’s say you release your single to an internet radio station. You realize that the same station most likely got 100 other songs on the same day as they received yours, right? Look at your village; Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Aunt, Uncle, five friends, and even your 73 year old Grandma has a computer today. These people actually love and care about you. If you ask them to reach out to just three of their friends or co-workers you can get 48 people in a single day to request your song. Now get them to do it three times a week. That is 144 requests a week for your song. Believe it or not, that is huge! Most artists or groups receive less than ten requests a week other than their own on internet radio stations.

Does it bother you to ask your village for help? Do you think it is stupid to have your Mom ask her co-workers to log on to an online radio station and request your song? Do you think your Dad really won’t go to work today and ask his buddies to help out his son? Your wrong. Very wrong. I can hear you now; “You don’t know my parents, Sister, Brother, etc...” Actually I do. I have been doing this a long time. Sure, not everyone is going to follow through. That is why I stated earlier that you will find the “diamonds in the ruff.” But you have to be willing to look for them. You have to be willing to ask for help. You will be surprised by how many friends your Mom and Dad have that will go online and request your music even if they do not like the style. Why? Because they care about your Mom and Dad and are their friends and what to support them in any way they can even if it means requesting a song that they think is horrible. Your friends will do the same.

Marketing music is about working smart, not hard. If you are trying to do it all alone you are working hard, not smart. The smart thing to do is ask for help from your village. When I was starting out in the music business as a drummer for a band I tried to learn everything I could. I thought I was being smart. Indeed, I was gaining a lot of information,  but I was not using the information I gained to the fullest potential. I didn’t have a village to help. I didn’t think about looking around at the village I had. I didn’t even look at my band as my village. They didn’t read the stuff I did or talk tot he people I did. I thought they had to know what I knew. What I know now is that they only needed direction or for me to ask them to help.

Once you know what you need to do to market your music you need to use your village to take action. Stop working hard and start working smart. Here is an example; Your friends might not know how to write an email with a link to your music, but you do. When you write an email to market your music, copy it and send it to your friends and ask them to send it to their friends. This way your friends have direction. In most cases, the reason friends and family do not help or take action is because they do not know how to help. They have no idea how to market music and it scares them. Sure, your Mom might tell a co-worker that you have a gig this Friday, but how much more effective would it be if you gave her a hand full of fliers and asked her to pass them out to the dock workers at her job? Much more! The same thing applies when you ask your friends to send an email to all their friends telling them about your music. If you give them an email to send to their friends it is much easier for them to take action, all they have to do is send it to anyone they know! They don’t have to try to create a marketing message.

As you progress with your music marketing efforts you will see that your village will grow, you will see that the folks that are not really into helping disappear, and you will see that the “diamonds in the ruff” come forward. As you begin to make money with your music and can afford to offer these “diamonds in the ruff” pay for their efforts you will start to build a lasting village that can generate mass consumption of your music. This is when you know you have built a village and you are no longer alone. Marketing music is not a singular activity. It takes a village!

Peace,
Jai
“Love the Music in Yourself, Not Yourself in the Music!”
©2009 Jai Hutcherson. All Rights Reserved.