Chapter 1 Excerpt from
“The Five Life Stages Of The Music Industry”
Music 3.0 The Dawn Of Artist/Fan Communication
The biggest change in the music industry with the coming of Music 3.0 is its structure. In M30, the middlemen can be cut out of the loop. The artist and the fan are now directly in-touch on every level they choose to be, from creation to promotion to marketing to sales. But merely staying in-touch with a fan can be as fleeting as it sometimes is with friends or family. True fans, just like friends and family, want regular communication, and whether they know it or not, so do the artists.
Music 3.0 allows the artist to promote and market directly to the fan. If he can reach the fan, he can make them aware of his products (music, tickets, and swag). Music 3.0 allows the artist to directly sell those products directly to the fan, from event tickets to music to branded merchandise. If he can reach the fan, he can sell to them (although “offer them a product” might be a better way of putting it). Most importantly, Music 3.0 allows the artist to have a dialog with the fan to help with sales and marketing. What does the fan want? Just ask him. Does the fan want to be alerted when the artist comes to town? Does the fan want a remixed version of a song? Would the fan be interested in a premium box set? By just asking, the fan will gladly let him know. And this is the essence of Web 3.0 - communication between the fan and the artist.
Another factor in M30 is that the audience has become niche oriented. From Swahili Polka to Mandarin Madrigal, if an artist searches long enough, she will find an audience. But although stratification of the audience means more opportunities for more artists, it also means that the possibility of a huge multi-million selling breakout hit diminishes as fewer people are exposed to a single musical genre than ever before. Nearly gone are the days that a television appearance or high-rotation radio airplay can propel an artist to platinum level success.
While remnants of the old Music 1.0 structure still exist (record labels, brick and mortar record stores, terrestrial radio, MTV, etc) and can even be useful to the Music 3.0 artist, they will probably never again be the primary driving factor in the success of any artist. In a roundabout way, they never really were (the music is always the defining factor) although their influence was admittedly higher in the past.
It’s said that a record label never signed an act because of its music; it signed them for the number of fans they had or had the potential of developing. If you had lines around the block waiting to see you play, the music didn’t matter to the label because you had an audience that was willing to buy it. And so it is with Music 3.0, only now you can develop that audience in a more efficient way, and actually make a living with a limited but rabid fan base (see 1000 True Fans in Chapter 6).
The rest of this book is about how to make use of the benefits that Music 3.0 affords an artist.
Figure 1.7 - Music 3.0 Overview
Music 3.0
No middleman
Direct artist to fan communication
Direct sales the the fan
Direct marketing to the fan
The audience is stratified
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1.
Copyright © 2012 Bobby Owsinski Media
Author - Producer
Music and Technology Advisor
“This book is cutting edge for marketing music in the digital age. It an absolute must have for artists that are trying to make it on their own. This book was a total fresh breath of air because it’s a marketing book that doesn’t read like a marketing book. I recommend this book to everyone I know who’s involved with music.”
Thomas Jones
